ALWAYS, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!

The Boys Reston Town Center, VA

And this is why I have not been posting . . .

I am sitting hear in the kitchen amidst the strewn carnage of what was once my laptop. I can see the innards and I tell you what, they aren’t pretty.

You see, a few long days ago, my computer started acting funny. (Right now I am using Dave’s computer to write this.)

We thought it was my hard drive and because I have not backed it up in a long time, I thought that I had lost many of your emails and many of my photos. Dave spent two days trying to connect to my computer. Last night we threw our hands in the air and drove over to CompUSA and bought a new hard drive. Dave spent a few more hours taking apart my computer and installing the new hard drive.

Oh, did I mention that yesterday was our EIGHT YEAR ANNIVERSARY? We were too distracted to really care. He bought me flowers and I bought him new cereal bowls. Woo-hoo! I love you Dave. Instead, in celebrating, he was installing and I was staying out of his way. I felt so bad.

Finally, he came into our room and said,

“The NEW hard drive doesn’t work. The good news is that it is not your hard drive. We will eventually be able to get your pictures and email. The bad news is that your computer is hosed. I think it is your mother board.”

With that, I encouraged him to come watch a movie with me and celebrate our eight years together [wink, wink] and so we did.

If I owe you an email and I know that I owe many of them, now it is going to take even longer. I am praying that we can recover everything. I guess it just makes sense, my camera is already in the shop, so what’s losing the other most important gadget in my life?

P.S. I just had an idea. If you need to get ahold of me, post a comment.

19 thoughts on “ALWAYS, ALWAYS BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER!

  1. It was great to read your new post! We have missed you! Computer problems suck big time. So, I know I’m not the only one wondering about your pregnancy. How are you feeling these days?

    Keeping you in my thoughts!
    🙂 Andrea

  2. I was throwing things onto my external drive before I was even out of Bloglines. Thanks for the reminder 😉 Happy anniversary to you both 🙂

  3. Beth, we had the same type of disaster a few weeks ago. I am now backing up all of our photos to Flickr and to various CD’s. It’s amazing the feeling of loss one can have over 3 years of photos!

    BTW, I’m so happy for you and your soon-to-be extended family. I cried when I read your post.

    All the best to you and yours!

    Melanie

  4. Happy anniversary! My husband would so totally love new cereal bowls as a gift! Sorry to hear of your computer problems, look forward to your system being back up and running!

  5. Thank you guys. I wondered if anyone would comment seeing as how I have been so MIA lately.

    Andrea, The pregnancy is good. I have another ultra-sound next week. I get some test results today. I am still cramping, but I have actually had days where I feel sick.

    Yes, and if I have any lessons for any of you, it is that you always back up your hard drive. My computer has been acting weird and SLOW for the last two weeks, yet, I still ignored the signs. Silly silly me.

  6. As a computer engineer I am extremely compelled to tell you it’s going to be much cheaper, faster, and less stressful to take the machine to a repair shop (or a geeky friend) than to buy random parts hoping that’s the problem. I shudder to think you might have thrown away your hard drive thinking it was “bad” when you just had some funky spyware or a cable issue! 🙁

    In fact, if you can describe the problem I can suggest some possibilities as to what may be wrong. Feel free to email me.

  7. Great advice, Jenn!

    Dave is pretty Mac savvy and thank goodness would not just throw away our hard drive. He might put it in a frame and nail it to the wall, but he would certainly not hastily trash it. Once he discovered the Mother Board issue, however, he felt lame. At least now I have a newer and bigger hard drive. Luckily last night, we were able to back up my stuff to our external hard drive. I just need to get him home so I can access it.

    At this point, of course, we are sending it in for repairs.

    I will email you with any questions.

  8. That D@*! Mother. You poor thing. Funny thing, without my camera, I don’t feel much like opening my laptop.

    Hope you are feeling well.

  9. Ouch! I am so sorry. Been there, done that, got the free t-shirt and shot glass. Happy 8 years by the way!

  10. happy Anniversary! 😉

    I was worried about you, and was about to compose an email to you saying something along the lines of “Look, I’m beginning to feel very stalkery, but are you OKAY?” I guess, in hindsight, I coulda called you back, but then if there was something worrisome happening, I would have felt even MORE stalkery. Glad you’re fine, that it was just your stupid computer. 😉

  11. Glad to hear everything is ok! If it makes you feel any better, I felt like I was about to get my period (cramping-wise) throughout the first six months of my pregnancy and my baby is just fine.

  12. Happy late Anniversary!

    I just viewed your vacation photos and they are amazing! It looks like you had a wonderful time. And like I commented on one of the pics, Kyle and Eli are getting so big. Eli especially is looking older in the face.

    Gorgeous photos and sons!

  13. You have inspired me to go home and back up. What a nightmare. At least your photos are not lost. I would cry. :o(

    Happy Anniversary!

  14. I’m glad you’re back up and running…sort of. I just went through a similar forced hiatus when Verizon decided to just dork out on me.

    Thank you for the reminder. I’m bakcing up my stuff up as I…type.

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