In October 2002, I was issued a brand, spanking new Dell laptop. Nice machine. Been working great, but I’ve noticed problems with this model–overheating, keyboards and screens dying, and hard drives toasting. Mine? Had the keyboard replaced last summer (learned to be proactive when a colleague couldn’t type his NATO meeting report over in Brussels because he’d lost the T-Y-G-H-B-N segment). I have some areas on the screen which are likely to give me trouble–had them mostly since it was new, but no obvious operational impact. Came back from convalescent leave and noticed a local colleague had a new laptop. I commented on it, and he said, “I had to get one, my hard drive fried. I was right in the middle of email, heard a couple crashes, and got the Blue Screen of Death.” So, today, when my cursor stopped moving in the middle of typing an email, and I heard a couple loud clicks emanating from the hard drive location on my laptop, I sensed impending doom. An hour or so later, it did it again. Before I had to leave the office to accompany my boss to a briefing he was giving across the tunnel to one of our counterparts, I restarted the machine. When I returned this afternoon around 4:15, it logged me in reallllllly slllllllowly. I mentioned it to my buddy, so offered me the 160G USB drive he’d used to recover what he could of his hard drive that crashed, so I could back mine up. I started that process around 4:30. Finished at 8:15. But I have all those email files (I have a file for every year I’ve been here–more than 1G each file–this year’s file is 1.4G; too large, I need to winnow it down into a new one) backed up as well as all my documents and settings.

The drive should be under warranty, so I’ll speak with my technician on Monday morning to see where we need to go from here.

I approached my physical therapy technician this morning about returning to the gym next week, and he tactfully suggested I NOT do that. I will listen to him, and I suspect I hear several of you out there applauding that fine young man. Maybe I need to let him crank up my electroshock therapy…Oh, and ‘steamboats,’ properly done, are tougher than you think. Especially when the tech chides you for balancing yourself on a solid object. I complimented him and told him he was doing a much better job of living up to my expectations that he be an administrator of pain and suffering. He smiled. I like this guy’s sense of humor.