Family Reunion and Backup Blues

  Wow!  What a great weekend I had!  We went to Pittsburgh for a family reunion, and I got to see family I haven't seen in a few years.    I can't believe I am now the one  walking around in shock at how big everyone's kids are getting! Pretty soon, some of us cousins are going to be sharing pictures of grandbabies!
Hopefully that will  a   few reunions away for me!

Jessie got sick, so she stayed at my moms with Chris, and the rest of us ended up leaving the reunion early.  I was disappointed, but I hate to be away from the kids when I know they are not feeling well. Plus I wanted everyone to meet Jessie. She is such a beautiful and awesome girl.

It was not a wasted trip though, because  both nights we were there I stayed up late shooting the bull with my mom and dad, and I kept my dad up past three each night. Sorry dad! LOL  It might take him until vacation to recover! It was alot like what my dad and his mom used to do, and  we woke my mom up at least once with our loud voices and laughing.

One of the things I talked to my dad about was backing up the computer. I have an external drive for  just that thing, though I haven't copied any files to it for a few months. So when we got home from our trip to Pittsburgh, you can imagine my expression  ( and hopefully not the vocabulary) when we went to turn on the computer and nothing showed  up on the monitor.    I was hoping the thing was asleep. The computer was on, I could hear it running and the lights were a flashing, but  no signal was going to the computer. Ruh Roh Rooby.

I hoped it was just a video card that we could replace.   Chris  took the PC to Best Buy  in search of a video card replacement.  The Geek Squad ran a quick diagnostic, and the motherboard is toast.  I mean that literally. The Geek  looked at it, and there were bulging something or others ( not including my eyeballs) .
 A while back we had a nasty storm that we thought blew out the power supply.  We replaced the power cord and everything seemed fine, but  he said that surge was the likely cause of the problem, it was just a matter of time before we had this failure.

He said he personally wouldn't replace anything, let alone  the motherboard on  a five year old computer. The motherboard  would be three  or four hundred dollars. The only good news is that the hard drive seems to be fine and we should be able to recover anything on it we want to save. ( Only Jeff's graduation pictures, itunes, etc ..ugh!)  We can do that ourselves for about 30 dollars for the part needed to transfer the information, or , Best Buy can do it for 100.

So , if you are reading this and you haven't saved your important pictures or information lately,  yesterday would be a great day to do it. ( And every time you add a precious photo from your camera).
I did have a lot saved, but it does not help me  with the last three months  worth of stuff.

 

I have my lap top, which is  one comfort, but the kids are already missing the PC and  Joshua misses the TV tuner  that let him watch Spongebob on the computer ( for those times that I can't stand another yellow minute of  it.)
My nickname may be Pineapple, but I get tired of  " Who lives in a Pineapple under the sea?"
All of my software is for Windows, so  that means another PC for me at some point.  I will get to experience first hand the  joys or lack of in Windows 7.   It shouldn't be too bad  , I am one of ten who don't mind Windows Vista .

Computers Suck Animation A great animated spoof of the Mac VS PC commercials. The animation was very well done in the style of South Park.