Monday, January 21, 2008

Electronics Catastrophe of 2008

In 1999, my first laptop was rendered out of commission for a year or so after a glass of milk tumbled out of my hand and onto its keyboard, seeping into the crevices and corroding everything it came in contact with. Same with my first digital camera in 2002 after a vodka and fruit juice fiasco. Both were colossal oops's that'll go down in history as some of my dumbest moves ever. Both were sent off to the manufacturer and fixed at barely worth fixing vs. replacing costs but were salvagable in the end. Amazingly enough, they're both still around and functioning today.

Can't say that brand of fortune will extend to my latest electronics disaster. Both Firedog and the Geek Squad agree (PC diagnostic services at Circuit City and Best Buy), my latest two and a half year old HP laptop is now a paperweight. This time it wasn't beverage-related, thankfully, but I was still responsible. After shuffling around in my bunny slippers doing this and that, I simply touched the keyboard and *ZAP* the static electricity I discharged went on to fry both the motherboard and the hard drive. They couldn't even get the hard drive to respond long enough to do a data transfer to my new machine. Luckily I backed up everything important (good Angela), but only as far back as the end of June '07 (bad Angela). Among the losses, all my photos of my August trip to Vegas and of Kristy's wedding. But fortunately, I happen to have stored the best of those online. All in all, nothing devastating was lost (that I can remember thus far). The hardest loss to swallow has really been all the music I'd accumulated in 10 years' time. *tear*

You can bet I'll be enstating two new practices this year:

1. Actively discharging static on an object other than my laptop, and
2. Investing in an external hard drive back-up.

1 comment:

Jackie Parker said...

WOW. I'm so going home tonight and dumping everything on my external hard drive. I haven't done it since July...

Thanks for the reminder, but sorry for your loss...