The "C" word

This weekend the dreaded "C" word happened to my laptop, it crashed.

We decided to spend the weekend at Cape St Francis and on Saturday afternoon I decided to do a post. I put of a new CD I had bought,with some of my all time favourite Elvis songs and was just getting into it, when there was something like a power surge. Elvis started to splutter and the screen started to display a kaleidoscope of colours. Then it was black quiet and I thought, "I wonder if it does not like Elvis?"

My blood understandably ran cold. My life is in that computer and I had not backed up for a few months, in spite of my good intentions to do so.

I rebooted and hey presto it was working, but all I got was what looked like an over developed negative. No problem I thought, I will just reboot. This time it came on as normal. I quickly put it into hibernation mode and resolved to do without it for the rest of the weekend and backup as soon as we got home.

The backup went smoothly and the virus check was clear, but when I turned it on at work on Monday morning, the screen resolution was something like 60x80.

"No problem," said the guy from IT, very cheerfully, "I will have it sorted out soon."

Two hours later I asked him if I was sorted out and in the same cheerful voice he announced, "No, it has crashed."

More cold shivers.

It seems like it was a motherboard problem so all my data and pictures are still safe on the hard drive and have been backed up by the IT guy as well. Hopefully I will get it back with new innards today. I say hopefully, because that is what they said yesterday.
The moral of this story is clear. You never know when the "C" word might happen, so do regular backups. This is my first crash in eight years and I came out unscathed - I could have lost my last four months work and photos.

As soon as I get it back I will be blogging as usual.