Experiencing Technical Difficulties

For the second time in two months, our 3-year-old computer flat-lined, and I had to take it to the tech doctor.

Hard wear.

The first time, the hard drive was toast, but a team of surgeons was able to extract most of our data and reload it onto a new hard drive.

"So," you are going to ask, as did the tech who serviced our machine, "did you back up your files?"

Well, we thought we did. Until we discovered the back-up drive, which is supposed to do its thing automatically, had pooped out sometime in April. After that, anything we hadn't backed up manually was available only on the damaged hard drive.

As I said, we were lucky, in that we were able to recover our data. Luck came with a $200 price tag.

Fast forward to this past week, when our computer once again displayed a dark screen with a different but equally ominous error code.

Before taking it in, I did an online search for the error code, and found that all I had to do was insert the recovery disk for my operating system. The disk that didn't come with my computer. The disk that, according to Asus, the manufacturer of my laptop, they no longer send to their customers free of charge. A woman with a foreign accent assured me that I could buy something that might do the job. Not feeling the love, I told her, "no thanks."

The other alternative, according to Microsoft forums, was to download something that would fix my computer. Unfortunately, I couldn't get to the internet to download the fix because all I could get on my computer was the black screen of death.

Into the shop it went. Turns out, it was a corrupted Microsoft update. This time, because it was a different error and thus not covered by the warranty from the last repair, it cost me $45 to fix. (Et tu, Microsoft?)

Fearful that a third mishap could be around the corner, I ordered a recovery disk from ebay. Hopefully, this will appease the Electronics Gods, and I won't ever have to use it. But I will be prepared, just in case.

Technology is a wonderful thing, really it is.

But I gotta say, I do wax nostalgic sometimes for the days when I wasn't a slave to hunks of metal with sketchy recall. 

When the only faulty memory was my own.