The day my computer crashed (and I how I survived the impact)

 The adventure started after a week of intensive editing and rewriting with D.L. Dixen, who is co-authoring the upcoming Pine County mystery, "Skidded and Skunked". Having set that manuscript aside to work on a more pressing task, my income taxes, I opened my computer and saw...the blue screen of death. Yep. That's a real thing. Digging a bit got me into a diagnostic that said. "No Hard Drive is Detected."

I was reasonably certain that not having a hard drive, where all of my files are saved, was a very bad thing. Some internet research on my smart phone confirmed that opinion. Bad. Worse than bad. Worse than really bad. Thoughts raced through my head.  Oh no! When did I last save my income tax worksheet? When did I last save the "S&S" manuscript?

I dug through my paperwork to find the computer's extended warranty information. Hmm. I bought the three-year extended warranty! Yay! The computer is...seven years old. Boo! 

The warranty information assured me that even past the end of the warranty, the provider (Geeks R Us) would be happy to evaluate the failure if I dropped the computer off and called back in a week. Minimum charge $149. (Additional $99-250+ if they actually repaired/recovered anything.)

Hoping to understand the problem, I went through a "root cause failure analysis." I determined the root cause was my mental imaging of smashing the computer on the sidewalk during the previous week's very slow Windows 10/11 conversion. Yes, the crash was my own fault. Karma got me for wishing the computer dead. Actually, my hatred may have been directed at the Microsoft engineer who decided it was to MY benefit to update from my functioning system to a new system that slowed my computer, frustrated me, and reformatted my files. I pulled out my thumb drive of backups and used my phone to verify that the most recent files had been saved. After a sigh of relief, I pulled the plug on the old computer, declared it officially dead, and went shopping.

A nice gentleman at Costco showed me a wonderful new computer, on sale for only slightly more than Geeks R US charge for evaluating and recovering the files from that hard drive. The new computer is lightning fast. It has more capabilities than I'll ever use and, as the salesman pointed out, has enough memory to record every movie that's ever been made! (Who would do that???)

 I took it home, plugged it in, inserted the thumb drive, and found all of my files. Yay!

Adding insult to the computer crash injury, the following week, my printer died. I feel like I'm in electronics purgatory! My mother, a pessimistic Swede, said bad things always happen in threes. Yes, my cell phone died the following week. With three, now functioning replacements, life moves on.

Hopefully, the computer change enhanced "Skidded and Skunked", the May release of the next Pine County mystery.

Check out the BWL website for D.L. Dixen's bio and links to all of my/our books.

Books We Love Home Page - BWL Publishing Inc.

Dixen, D.L. - BWL Publishing Inc.