Crash and burn

Yesterday my computer froze up. Usually not a problem, just turn it off and reboot.

This was a problem. Got the "blue-screen-of-death" saying the computer was shut down to prevent irreparable damage to the computer, etc. etc. So, I try to reboot in safe mode. Nope. Reboot to last workable configuration. Nope. Reboot from installation disk. Nope.

So had it taken to the local computer repair place. I trust them, they run a tight ship and are nice geeks, like me. We have good conversations. Anyhow, my hard drive was fried. No reason, they sometimes burn out. Luckily they were able to transfer all the files to the new drive, that they installed. yay!

In the meantime - well, last night - I took stock of how much I do on the computer, and how much I could do without. In the past few months, via NetFlix, we have been spending about a night or two a week watching DVDs, which is fun. Without the computer, I would do more of that, although I do time-shift some programs that I miss. Of course, I miss them because I am playing on the computer.

If the hard drive had not been able to be saved, I would have started over with a pristine, unformatted drive. And as a result, I probably would have cut out a lot of things that are currently on my drive, and found new things to be doing with my time.