Oh Wonderful Technology!!!!

It is a scary and horrible thing when part of the family becomes critically ill, but last week that is what happened to our computer. I must confess I never really knew how important the family computer -we will call it Al (reference Space Odyssey 2001)- was to us until it became sick. It started after Madison pushed the glowing, beckoning red button under the desk, which happened to be the on/off button to the power strip that Al and all our other electronics were connected to. With an abrupt gasp, Al turned off. This is not the first time Madison has suddenly extinguished Al's life support system, and usually it comes with the annoyance of having to restart the computer after losing whatever we had been working on, but this time, after pushing the power button, the usual restart did not happen. In fact, there was nothing but a slickly green light in front and nothing else, no boot up, or fan turning, not even the "blue screen of death" that at least tells you your computer is on but everything you had stored on it is probably lost. No, our computer would simply not turn on. Houston, we have a problem!

You never realize how important the family computer is in your life until it is no longer available. I know what you might be thinking, "Give me a break. It's sad if your computer is that important to you." But think about it. I was at least able to use a computer at work, but I could no longer check personal email or do my math homework. Shelly had no internet access and immediately called Dell's tech support, but there was no easy fix. After much plugging unplugging, pushing different buttons, opening up the computer case, and in general, praying to the all powerful Computer God, we were finally able to turn the computer back on. After Al turned on again, Shelly was not taking any more chances. That night after dinner, instead of giving Madison and getting her ready for bed, we dragged her to Best Buy where we bought a 500MB external hard drive, a new printer (oh yeah, our printer died, too), and a new laptop, which I am using to write this blog. We then immediately went home to back up our ailing, but still alive, Al. I don't know what USB 2.0 was, but when the people who sold me the external hard drive asked if our computer had it, I said, "yes". More concerned about backing up our computer and getting out of Best Buy, I could really care less what kind of USB port my computer had, for it had a USB port, and isn't that good enough? Here is the short of it: our computer does not have USB 2.0, and though I still can't tell you how important that is, after 2 days of running straight, the external hard drive still had not backed up our computer. The computer finally just shut down. In the meantime, after talking to anybody who knew anything about computers, it was finally determined that it was the power source that had gone bad, but you can only use Dell power sources for they are proprietary.

In the end, I ordered a new starter for Dell, which arrived today. Though it came with no instructions and lots of wires, I was able to make a rough diagram before disconnecting the bad starter and successfully connect the new starter. I also properly installed a USB 2.0 port, and I did all of this properly -only furthering my beliefs that with a little patience and thorough reading you can install almost anything on your computer.

As I write this, Al is working fine, and I am once again trying to back it up to the external hard drive. I only hope it doesn't take 2 days this time.