Wednesday, July 21, 2021
Fortunately, unfortunately...
This morning I woke up at 330, more or less as usual. Soon after waking, a thunderclap happened, followed by some nice rain. I shut off the computer, which had been running the usual bedtime playlist. After the brief storm passed, I turned the computer on again. Oops! Expensive noises, and HARD DISK FAILURE.
I don't know if there was a lightning strike before I woke up, or if the computer just finally aged out. Most likely the lightning.
Fortunately the computer had been showing signs of age for a while, and I had bought a "new" refurbished Win 7 unit back in November. So I disconnected the old one and plugged everything into the new one. Started up, and it neatly established connections with the mouse and keyboard and web. This only took about 15 minutes.
Unfortunately I should have done the substitution earlier while the old one was still running. At that time courseware was still urgent and active, so the transfer was a bad idea. After the courseware settled down in April, there was relentless bad weather plus the stress and weariness of fighting the holocaust, so I still didn't do the transfer.
Fortunately I always back up current courseware and graphics to USB, so I can just copy those back to the new one.
Unfortunately the new unit is a 32-bit computer, which I either didn't notice or was misrepresented. So some programs aren't happy.
In sum, the only thing really missing is my bedtime OTR playlist, which never got backed up on USB. I know what was there, so I can reconstitute it from CDs and from OTRCAT.com.
Soon I'll need to buy a 64-bit unit more carefully. For now I'm mostly up and running.
¶ 7:09 AM 
