PC failure

[dr_kromm]

A brief note to friends, colleagues, and others who may give a doodle: The hard drive on my primary PC died on March 6. While the machine is in the shop, I'm relegated to using this very old, rather basic laptop with a bad keyboard. I lack all access to my archived e-mail, I can only correspond via gmail, and I don't even have access to a copy of Word.* I am therefore not very available online . . . or in real life, as I dicker with shops and eventually spend many days rebuilding my work environment. If it's desperately important that you get in touch, try the phone.

Thanks for your patience!

* Those of you who deal with me professionally shouldn't worry: all drafts and notes on drafts are backed up. Nothing valuable was lost except for my time.

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

Having been through comparable disruptions, I know how profoundly annoying that is. You have my sympathies. I hope the repairs go quickly and with as little stress as can reasonable be expected.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Bill. We'll see what the stress level is like when the shop finally gets back to me with the diagnosis. Or, more likely, when they don't and I've called them a bunch of times and finally retrieved my PC after days of waiting. If the drive is truly ruined, then the biggest loss will be my e-mail archive. My work per se will be safe, but losing all the little items of correspondence that go into planning a product will niggle me no end. Needless to say, I wish I had bought an external drive and software that mirrors my entire system, very specifically including installed apps; the last time I looked, though, that was kind of costly for a Windows-based system.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

It probably has to do with being a full-time telecommuter: I'd be willing to wager that the PC on my desk sees more uptime and more read/write operations in a year than the average user's computer experiences over its lifetime. I don't have or use a car to get to work, so I most likely also have the best luck with cars of anyone you know. :) It averages out.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Word from the shop is that the drive is deceased. Looks like I get the fun of reinstalling all my apps, reconfiguring them, and personalizing my work environment all over again. Oh, well . . . at least I have my work data. Too bad about all the other data.

I'll be over here grousing about this, my cold, the exchange rate, and other troubles all week. Thank you, thank you very much!

March sucks.

[j-larson.livejournal.com]

There are data recovery firms that can recover most of the contents of a misbehaving drive. They may be quite pricy, though.

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes . . . I know. Honestly, though, a few photos of the cat and my video-game settings just aren't worth it. With my work data backed up, the valuable stuff is safe. Really, the rest is more about frustration than finances. More to the point, data recovery is way beyond my means. I edit RPGs, and while that isn't a minimum-wage job, it isn't so much better that I can afford the luxury of data recovery.

Resend email?

[douglascole.livejournal.com]

Sean,

Can you hit me up with your email addy again? It's trapped on my home PC downloaded to a computer I don't access much. I can answer your questions better...

Re: Resend email?

[dr-kromm.livejournal.com]

Done! I sent it to you via gmail.