This morning, it appeared to be dead. It sometimes spontaneously turns off and then refuses to turn back on, so I hoped that this might be another case of a finicky power supply... but then even Marc couldn't turn it on, and he usually has the magic touch (a la the boy who can talk to machines on Heroes).
He took the computer to work and had some tech services guys look at it. It turns out, the power supply seems to be fine. Evidently, it's the hard drive.
**PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT**
Please back up your computer.
I heard that so many times, but I never seemed to find the time, plus I wasn't sure how to even do it properly.
Boy do I regret not doing it now!
Don't make excuses.
Just do it.
Did I mention I spent 9 hours yesterday working on a Blurb book? Yeah, all the changes seem to be gone now.
Fortunately, I keep almost all of my photos on an external hard drive and on smugmug (so I only lost a few).
But right now, I am heartily mourning the loss of all of my data!
-- Primary talks my kids have given
-- Birthday/Christmas tags
-- Party invitations
-- so many many .pdf files I downloaded over the past 4 years
-- tons of ideas to keep for later
-- all of my lovingly compiled bookmarks!
-- software that we don't have the disks for and therefore can't reinstall
-- the many, many, many CDs we have loaded into iTunes (we still have most of the CDs, but that was a lot of tedious work!)
-- that blasted Blurb book, which now will not meet tomorrow's submission deadline for being ready in time for Christmas...
Max is sad about his games that he downloaded and registered over the years. Also his budding computer programs he has been writing.
We haven't given up all hope yet, but it is not looking good for that hard drive.
I must have walked over to the computer desk 25 times today, wanting to check something or other. (Why would my brain refuse to retain the information that it was gone??)
All day long I wondered what we would do if the computer was beyond repair. We can't live without a home computer! And we certainly don't have a big chunk of cash lying around.
Despairing, Max added this to his Christmas wish list.
So imagine our enormous surprise when Marc came home tonight with a new iMac!
Apparently he's been planning for the last 6 months to surprise us with a new computer for Christmas -- what the? It's not financed, it's paid for. Seriously, what are the odds? He wanted to save it until Christmas, but I think he knew we couldn't be without for that long. I think it was even better this way, because we were right there in the midst of our computer-less pain, and it could not have been more unexpected.
The screen is bigger, the keyboard is super-sleek, and it came with a new mighty mouse that is fully functional!
So, to sum up:
Losing data = so sad.
New computer = very happy!
Having a blog + smugmug (online storage) = endlessly grateful.
