Looking Back Through Old Files

Yeah!!! Last summer a virus hit my computer that totally shut it down. I took it in to get the virus removed, but it was too far gone. The only remedy would have been to reinstall the entire operating system. I had checked around here and the cost to fix the computer was so high that as old as it was and the fact that it had already been regularly overheating and hadn't been working very well even before being KO'd by the virus, it didn't make sense to spend as much as it was going to cost to get it fixed. So, I just did without a computer. Darcy graciously shared her microscopic netbook with me the four months or so before we finally bought a new computer. At one point, I tried to get the computer fixed by one of the computer students at the college...he free-lanced and had offered to back up my data and re-install the operating system at a pretty good price. What he said would take him the weekend, turned into one week, then two weeks, then three weeks...finally, I just retrieved my computer from him, still untouched and pretty much gave up on ever salvaging my files off it. Then, it dawned on me that among the unarchived photo files, which I could bear to sacrifice, was also my only copy of "The Darcy Journal"...about 350 pages of stories I had written about Darcy from 1997 through about 20001. The thought of losing that left me sickened.

Two weeks ago, Lisa sent me her laptop computer from Nome to see if I could get it repaired. I tried out a place in Springfield that I had heard about on a local radio program. They did a terrific job in a short amount of time at a really good price. The day I went to pick her computer back up, I brought my broken laptop with me just to find out how much it would cost to get the data retrieved off it. The salesman told me it would be $50 and I said, "Great!" Then he suggested that I go ahead and have them re-install the operating system. I wasn't as quick to agree to that. But, when he assured me that it would only be $95 AND would INCLUDE the data back-up (not $95 PLUS $50 for the data backup), I agreed...figuring it would be nice to have it operational so the kids could play their educational games on that old computer instead of the computer we had since bought to replace it. When I came in to pick up my computer today (a week later) it turned out the salesman had been mistaken...the charge should have been $95 for system re-install PLUS another $50 for data back-up. But, since the first salesman had told me it would only be $95 total, they just charged me that. I really have been impressed with this place (Altec). It's good to know where I can take my computers if I need them fixed!

And, tonight, it was nice to be able to open up the Darcy Journal and see that it was still intact, not lost after all! And, I ran across the above photo of Doug...one of my all time favorite photos of my little Superhero! I played with it a bit in Picnik tonight and changed it up a bit...just for fun! I liked both of these new renditions of my old favorite!