Back At It

.  A week and a half ago, the computer was turned off, and it decided so much that it liked the rest, that it wouldn't turn on again.  The husband of a friend said he would come over to look at it.  I did offer to take it to him, but no, he wanted to see it here.  That was after David had fiddled around with it, which resulted in the computer case getting cleaned out with canned air (a good thing).  So then we had to do a frenzied clean up of the family room, which in the last year and a half had been abandoned to become a storage room for things we were accumulating for Wyndson Cottage, and things of my mum's I had kept but really didn't know where to put.  The family room got sort of cleaned up (another good thing).  While we were waiting for Bob to arrive, the computer decided, after nearly a day of silence, to start up on it's own (maybe a good thing?)  Too late to cancel Bob.  He figured that it was the power box.  The computer is nearly four and a half years old.  We don't have a surge protector.  He figured there was probably a power surge that knocked the computer down for a bit. May have been repeated power surges over the years that have weakened the power supply.  Recommended we get a UPS (uninterrupted power supply).  Finally did that.  Got the fancy dancy one that has a battery in it where the power coming in is stored, and it keeps the computer running for a little while if the power suddenly goes out. When I turned the computer off to connect to that, it wouldn't come on again.  I survived by borrowing other family member's laptops for a few days. I just find them awkward, although I was developing a bit of talent with the smaller Apple one.  Yesterday we bought a new power box, and David installed it last night.  Previously, he had moved the 18,000 photos that were clogging up one hard drive, to the other hard drive that was mostly empty. (Yeah, yeah, I need to sort through those pictures, probably three quarters of them could be deleted).  Last night he complained about how long it took the computer  to start up, so removed all the unnecessary programs that were all trying to start up at once.  So despite suffering some computer withdrawal, a lot of good has come out of this.  The innards of the computer case are clean.  The computer is working better, and faster I think, and hopefully some idiosyncrasies that popped up once in a while have been sorted out (although that remains to be seen yet).  If I'm near the end of writing a long email and the power goes out, I won't lose it. Okay, not something likely to happen, but darn frustrating when it does.  The family room is much cleaner, and I can walk from the stairs to the computer in a straight line.  I don't need a Stairmaster, I go up and down to the computer many times a day. 

 I'd be embarrassed to tell you how many times.