I love technology

We have had a near tragedy here...not really though when you compare to peoples real tragedy's...just a bad scare I guess you could call it.

I was scanning some pictures of family....some real good ones I got last time we were all together at mums.( which by the way seems like a century ago...I miss my sisters!) 

Anyway, all the sudden the screen goes white and there is this warning message that says there is some kind of overload on the usb port and my computer needs to shut down.  So I let it shut down ( like I could do anything about it) let it rest for a little while, then tried to start it up again.

First of all the mouse wouldn't work, so I tried the keyboard...nothing. 

All I could get was the blue start up screen.   I tried every trick I knew (both of them) but got the same results. 

So I called Candice...she is my computer guru...can usually walk me through any problems and get things going again.  She tried all the basics, then said she would come over and look at it.

She said Joe is quite the whiz on the computer...even builds his own so she would bring him with her.

He came over and looked the situation over.  He said my usb port was definitely broken, and my hard drive possibly fried.  He thought from the warning, that maybe there had been a power surge. ( what are my surge protectors doing???)  That was very bad news.  I cried a little.

Mostly just mad at myself for not saving all my pictures and important documents somewhere else.

I thought of all the things that have happened since 2007 and the gozillion pictures I had saved that told the story of my family's life for those 4 years.  I cried a little more.

I asked Joe what he recommended and he told us about a place where he knew the people and that they would be fair with me.

In the mean time,  I realized how much we depend on this amazing technology! 

We are in the process of changing health insurance..."We'll send your policy out and you can look at it online..." nope.

" Paula...didn't you get my email I sent you about the luau?"  nope.

"I'll get that recipe off the....wait no I won't!"

"I've got this great picture of Stacey's mom from her blog I can use...nope."

 K.C. ... "I kind of need to do my home work..."

"Need to pay that bill....ahhhhh"

Kelley..."need to get info from bishopric meeting"...(sent via email)

"I'll put that flyer together for the luau to put in Sunday's program"...nope...(this was the worst disaster..had to hand write luau invitation and draw my own palm tree.  Wow!  How did we ever survive before computers?)

I mean, of course we could survive...( actually stop wasting a lot of time on mindless fluff) but it sure helps out a lot too !  All of this incredible information that is right at our fingertips...it's quite mind boggling when you thing about how easy and wonderful it has made our lives...the fact that we can stay in touch with friends and family near and far away so easily is quite marvelous.

Anywho...So I take the computer to this place and told him what had happened.  He gave me a little hope and said maybe the hard drive would be savable or they could possible retrieve the information from it.  I wanted to kiss him.

Then the next day, he calls me and says he has taken it apart, and when that usb port was disabled, the windows came up just fine...so the problem was only in that port!  Hooooray!

He said if we were ok with only having one port in the front that worked, he would just make it so that broken one didn't mess with the computer anymore and we could come pick it up! 

What a relief!  I am buying an external hard drive today to put all my important stuff on! 

Ahhh the computer.. it  can be the most wonderful helpful thing, but then turn around and be the most frustrating aggravating,  kick it and throw it at the wall thing ever! but I love it.  Glad to have it back.