I have been quite busy over the last few days, and nearly everything I’ve been doing is related to computers. I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve been wanting a laptop. Well, I’ve also been wanting an external hard drive to back up all of my data so I don’t lose it again like I did last fall.

After our hard drive of four years crashed and lost every ounce of data, we were blessed to be given a used Seagate HD from a co-worker of Jon’s. This man doesn’t even work closely with Jon – they work in two separate buildings – but when Jon asked him for advice about our hard drive crash, the man attempted to retrieve our data and then gave us his old hard drive to replace ours. Very nice and I was so grateful for it because we couldn’t purchase a new one at that time.

Since beginning to use the Seagate HD, I would occasionally hear a high pitched sound when using the computer. At first, it wasn’t too bothersome but as the weeks passed, it became more frequent and more irritating. By last week, it was giving me headaches and on Wednesday, the high pitched squeal was happening almost constantly. Thursday, I searched the web to try and find out what would be causing the noise and what I could do to stop it. Everything I discovered said that a hard drive making such a sound is on its last leg and could crash at any moment.

Oh boy! I certainly didn’t want another repeat of that.

I told Jon what I’d discovered, and he said we should go that evening and buy a new hard drive, lest we lose everything again. So off we went to Staples and bought a Western Digital 320GB internal hard drive – on sale, of course. We then went to Wal Mart and bought an external hard drive – Maxtor One Touch 500GB – not on sale, but a good price. (I have absolutely no need for 320GB of space, much less 500GB, but you can’t get anything smaller anymore. I still remember when I saved my money for months until I was able to buy a 1.6GB hard drive for $120 in 1996.)

I spent several hours (not consecutively…I don’t think moms can do anything without lots of interruptions breaks) on Friday moving essential, irreplaceable files from the old, squealing hard drive onto the external hard drive and then onto the new internal hard drive. As with any computer venture, it took much longer than I had thought it would and I had to go off several paths that I hadn’t anticipated. It took me a while to find my email files and bookmarks and browser add-ons to move. But finally after church that night, I was able to get everything moved and the new hard drive now feels just like the old one. Isn’t it funny how your computer system feels like ‘home’ and when things are different, it just doesn’t feel right until you get them exactly right again?

Saturday, we went to a bigger city about an hour away to shop for and buy a laptop. We went to Office Max first but weren’t at all impressed with their selection. We then went to Best Buy and were almost overwhelmed with the number of laptops they had. After trying different ones, comparing specs, and so on, we chose a Toshiba Satellite with 3GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, and all the other features we wanted.

I played around with it on the way home, but the battery died part way there so I was forced to stop playing with my new toy. After we got home, I hooked it up and worked on connecting it to the internet…which, not surprisingly, didn’t end up being as quick and simple as I had anticipated. I ended up having to call our ISP to have them walk me through how to make the modem/router send out a wireless signal.

So here I sit on the couch, completely hooked up to the internet. It’s like a strange dream. A cushy seat and a computer, wow.

Just like there’s no great loss without some small gain, it seems that there can be no great enjoyment without at least a little sourness, but praise God anyway. The laptop’s screen has a black line, about 1/4″ long on it that won’t go away. I called Toshiba, and they said I’ll have to return it to the store and get another one. I had hoped to be able to just ship it directly to Toshiba and have them ship me a new one, but they said they don’t do that. Soooo…we’ll have to make another trip to ‘the big city’ next weekend.