Smugness rebutted!

Ok great gods of kismet, I surrender! Having declared my smug victory over the forces of big oil, I quickly find myself humbled at the Gods of Microsoft and their assorted peripheral attendees.

The evening up of the odds came this morning when I went to turn on my computer. Power Button ON, Monitor ON, Computer well not so fast.

When trying to boot up our just over a year old computer I was greeted with the black screen motif combined with the always popular start up screen that never gets past the point of syscheck. No amount of attempts to reboot would bring success, each successive foray met with refusal, and an ominous click, click clicking sound from somewhere deep in the tower.

Oh Great Microsoft Gods why dost thou mock me in me hour of need!

After about an hour of pointless turning on and off of my computer, staring blankly at my blank screen, I admit defeat and take it in to the local computer techs for their grim faced analysis. DEAD HARD DRIVE is the verdict, interestingly enough two months after the warranty had run its worthwhile course, now a worthless piece of paper, just a painful reminder of happier computing days.

As they explain the situation my eyes glass over, lost in the mumble jumble of the truly proficient as I try and calculate just how long its all going to take me to rebuild my lost links, lost files and assorted other artery clogging additions I have made over the last year. Have I mentioned that I'm possibly the most computer illiterate person ever placed in front of a monitor? No well lets just say that near as I can tell all that stuff that happens inside that little tower is nothing but voo doo, somewhere someone is sticking needles in a replica of my computer I just know it.

I dithered through the afternoon over whether to buy a new hard drive or not, but finally realize that my ancient Fujitsu backup computer just won't carry the weight anymore and alas late in the day I give the go ahead to my new found friends in tech land and await my new hard drives installation. Then I shall muddle my way through re-installing my XP, my Word, My Excel and all of the games my son just has to have back on the computer. And no for those that wish to tsk tsk, I had not done a recent back up, laziness having taken over from practicality,

And so a valuable lesson has been learned by your erstwhile reporter, the next time I beat the price at the pump I'm keeping it to myself, the planets can turn fast it appears. My computer born under a bad star with a blue moon in its drive, is a testimony to the rebuttal to smugness!