NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

Friday morning after class, I prepared to take in the numerous records I had been keeping all year to finally get my taxes done. When I turned on my computer, an error message come up saying it could not find the hard drive. Now, I am not very good with hardware, but even I knew that that was not a good message. I took my computer in to a store and hoped for the best. I came back five hours later and they were only 25% into reading my hard drive to try to save my information. My computer had my tax information, digital pictures, music, and my homework. So after a long weekend without my computer, I went back to the store where I was told that they were unable to recover anything. It's all gone. GONE! Now I know what you are thinking. You are thinking "you should have backed up your hard drive." Believe me, I have been told that a million times. In my defense, I tried to back up my photos on Kodak Gallery, but there was an error in downloading the program. Plus, I was getting ready to back-up my taxes when my hard drive crashed. On the upside, I now have a good reason to get a new laptop (yes, I have a gadget addiction.) Until then I have had to make due and it has been rough. One nighgt, I used my sister's desktop with a dial-up connecction and another evening I spent at the public library. My favorite part of that experience was the women at the computer next to me who were looking up prison inmates so they could try to make a love connection. I am currently using my roommate's computer which seems to have a "y" key that is about to give out. (I had no idea I typed so many y's.) I asked the guy who worked on my laptop if there were any clues. He listed a few like running slow, problems opening files, etc. Every problem I had in class and trying to do our usaility testing. So I have learned that I need to get busy on ordering a new computer, get an external hard drive, and use more words that do not have y's.

New Toy

I feel like a little kid on Christmas! I have a new toy. My cell phone's battery was pretty much burnt out and my car charger broke at the same time when I got a serendipitous offer from my wireless carrier to upgrade early to a Blackberry Pearl. At least, I took it as a sign. My roommate has a Blackberry and it just looked so cool! The little kid in me still cannot resist something so shiny with lots of buttons to push. When I ordered it over the phone, the salesman gave me the warning that it would take some getting used to. I will have to say that he was right. I have never had a phone that gave its own tutorial as soon as you turned it on for the first time. So far, I love the large screen and the roller ball for navigating around the screen. However, setting up the e-mail has not been easy. The phone will not accept my work or school address, so I had to create a Blackberry address. I really did not want another e-mail address to keep track of. I have not attempted (yet) to get my work and school accounts to forward to my Blackberry address. The other trial has been my contact list. I thought I was being proactive and I registered on my wireless carrier's website to get a back-up created of my contact list. Downloading that worked great, but my new phone does not support the software. Unless my laptop is with me, the online contact list just is not all that helpful. I can go to a store and have it transferred, but that will be taking away the convenience of having the phone mailed to my home in the first place. I suppose that ultimately the moral of the story is if you ever decide to make the leap from cell phone to smartphone, you'd be smart to go to the store in person and spend 15 minutes with a real person as apposed to a few hours with tech support and a manual at home. But it's okay. I am still excited about my new toy and it will be awesome once I get used to it! If not, I'm sure my wireless company will offer me an even more expensive upgrade in the future.