It’s human nature to not truly appreciate the value of something until we’re denied either in part or in full it’s presence in our lives. The last couple of weeks, I’ve been learning that about my computer. It is easy to be complacent about the use of it, the instant access it gives me to the internet and the data I store on it. I could even say I was somewhat smug about the fact that I had a desktop sitting idle while I used my laptop as my primary system. I wouldn’t be without my computer, one way or the other.

A couple of weeks ago, my laptop’s hard drive decided that I had apparently overworked it long enough and it started crashing. The sudden appearance of a whine coming from the drive was my major clue that it was dying. Thankfully, about a year ago, I bought a rather large external hard drive to store older files on. I hadn’t transferred older files in a while but there it sat.

Hooking it up to my laptop, booting in safe mode and with considerable prayer and patience, I managed to transfer most of my data files. I’d still give almost anything to get it up at least once or twice more to get some data files that aren’t yet accounted for and a bunch of photos off it but I have managed to rescue a lot of stuff.

While my sister comes to the rescue trying to find me a drive that wont cost me an arm and a leg, nothing ever happens when the budget is flush does it, I switched over to my desktop system. Hooking it up to the internet connection and proceeding to update it on necessary windows and anti-virus downloads. That worked great for about a week.

For some unknown reason last week, the desktop decided that I should not be up and running for any more than oh maybe an hour. If I exceeded that time, it would shut itself down and make me wait at least 10 minutes before allowing a reboot. That time offline can be frustrating. The time online, filled with constantly saving of work just in case the computer decides to change the up time alloted.

I’m hoping to get the hard drive for my laptop in a few days and then I have to start rebuilding the system. I need to have it rebuilt in time for my return to the office as my laptop is also my work computer. I really really need to let it know how much I appreciate it.