making peace

My laptop and I are starting over.

We are taking things slowly this time, and hopefully eventually becoming good friends.

It has occurred to me in the past couple of days that my old laptop might be salvageable, but I am wondering if it is worth repairing and whether any of the data would be salvageable. We'll see what happens. Someone I know recently had a hard drive die without a back up and described it as something similar to a house fire. You just lose so much stuff so suddenly.

apparently

they don't "do" returns.

and said they couldn't find a problem with my computer...

I'm running it all day today with fingers crossed that it makes the same terror-inducing noises it made a week ago so I can take it to the service desk while it's still making the noise.

I was pissed yesterday when I got the message.

Thought I'd returned it at 9am.

I'm a bit pissed that I didn't take the offer for a trade.   

Since they are making me keep it anyway.

apparently.  

ugh.

It's my magnetic field perhaps

Ben bought me a new macbook a few weeks ago for my birthday. Last week it started making noises very similar to the aforementioned laptop (that would be the sound of a hard drive dying). The noise comes and goes - and the noise is a bit different each time, but generally getting worse all week. Today it sounded like a plane getting prepared to take off. I just closed the computer and walked away.

I decided that I am just not meant to have a laptop right now. I am taking the signs. I am listening. I can repeatedly kill them with my aura for so long. At some point I have to listen. I am trying to be a better listener in so many ways.

Perhaps my magnetic field changed in the past 8 months & now I'm incompatible with laptops. It's not a bad thing since I feel like a better mommie without a computer or tv on to distract me. Reading is good. Perhaps I'll blog about what I've read since we moved up here. It's quite a list. Mostly vampire books. Speaking of which...I think I need to go get one in a couple of hours...

Tomorrow I am wiping the drive - correction, I am getting Ben to help me do whatever is necessary to get my info off there, since I historically don't do such things as they "should" be done. Then it's off to return it.

I am practicing "good stewardship" in the words of my extended father-in-law. I am using that which I already own and not contributing to the continued waste and consumerism that is this society. Plus I'll be saving us quite a few dollars by doing so. If I find in time that I can't stand sitting at a desk and using a slightly more ergonomic setup then I'll go pretend to be typing on my mostly dead laptop. I'll punish my carpal tunnel that way.

I believe this is for the best.

oh yeah

and we moved again too.

we're still in fort wayne, just in a new place -bye bye dog-house

i'll put up pictures maybe if I figure out how...it can't be hard, but I have to find the time.  Quite honestly I prefer sleeping to blogging, so we'll be figuring that one out later.

back in the saddle

So apparently it was the hard drive.  In a very large way.  I did some backups and it died so much that there isn't even a startup screen or a c prompt or anything except the words "error drive not found" or some such reassuring thing.

It took Ben's computer hours to scan the drive for errors remotely because there were so many errors to compile for the list.  If I'd run the scan it could have taken days because I don't know what I'm doing with computers most of the time, but Ben knows what he's doing and was a bit appalled at the state of my hard drive.  

And to put the cherry on top with a bit of flair. . . 

all that backing up I was so good about...

apparently I don't know how to appropriately back up a drive.  

Ben told me that my "backup" isn't really a backup since I failed to copy some particular thing for the files when I did my "backups". I sort of shut down after hearing that and don't really know what I did wrong.  I didn't absorb anything beyond the fact that I lost all my data.

It's been months and I'm so glad to have a computer to work on again.  

I miss my old one.  It was slow and cranky and old, but we had some good times.  

Maybe some day I'll get the pictures off the drive.  

If any of you have pictures of Stella please send them my way.  Send me an email and I'll forward you my snapfish info so you can load them on there.  All the ones I had on the drive and hadn't gotten around to copying to snapfish are gone gone gone...that makes me sad.  There were sooo many on there to be copied over.

Honestly I'm hoping Ben's wrong about the hard drive.  Keep your fingers crossed for me.

my tired old laptop

Last night I thought my computer had died completely - and me, here, without a backup - eeekkkk! 

I couldn't take the trauma of it so I went to bed and pretended it was fine.  When I got up this morning I waited - again with the ignoring of the trauma - until Stella took a nap today and tried to boot the little beast.  Hooray!   

First thing I did was back up just about every bit of info on the computer.  

But, just in case I don't show up here for a very long time. . . it could be that it happened again. Poor thing has been making some moaning noises for quite some time now.  

We'll see how long we can stick it out  : )

March Forth!

Ah, well, I missed it by a day. Whenever I get to the date March 4th I think of my mom & her dad who said that day was also a command. And so we shall march forth!

March 4th at our house consisted of a whole lot of time spent in the bathroom. Though not as painful as that sounds by itself. : ) Stella is potty training and we spent a good part of the day yesterday running upstairs to get her to the potty on time and then "hanging out" while she waited for the pee to come.

The high temp was at about 7am and it got colder and colder all day long. A "wintry mix" - which is a euphemism if I've ever heard one - all day long and apparently it turned to snow last night because we woke up with the most snow we've had so far. Probably 5 1/2 or 6 inches. The sad part to me is when it gets warm enough to melt it. Really. That is the sad part. : )

I got up at 5:30 this morning (not by choice. . . that'd be one of the perks of having a toddler) and got the driveway shoveled before Ben left for work around 8. I'd rather shovel it early and get to it before the tires pack it down and make it really really hard work. Stella cried inside while I was working because she wanted to help me. Once Ben let me know she was crying I came back in and got her all jacketed and scarfed and we went back out to finish. Her "help" involves wiping the snow off the little metal animals on our porch and knocking the snow off the handrails. She also scuffs around in her boots (which aren't really snow boots, but that's what she's got this year) and makes trails next to the stray cat's footprints all over our yard.

Last time it snowed like this we made a mountain out of the shoveled snow and made a snowman (perhaps my first snowman with a ball diameter longer than a foot ever!). So far today we've only made a snow mountain, but that is still mightily impressive.