Back on track, barely

Well, I’ve got my computer back, but not for long. A Geek in Shining Armor looked at it and said, “yep, hard drive’s bad. Looks like the damage you get when you drop it while its running.” Which didn’t happen to it, but I did drop a lamp on it when it was not running. You should see the lamp. He explained it all to me in great detail, and considering how I am with details, especially computer-oriented ones, its all one can ask of me to get the gist of what he said. Much the same applies to my brain’s ability to retain any information whatsoever about electrical things. I’m so uninclined toward the care and feeding of volts, amps, breakers and pretty much anything that has to do with electricity beyond an on-off switch, I still find it vaguely confounding that the electrons don’t spill out of the socket when you pull out the plug. I’m the same with TVs. Despite the fact that I’ve had the process explained to me, and that I’ve read a textbook description or two of the process, I really have no idea how they got all those tiny people inside the TV.

But back to the subject at hand: the hard drive is bad, Bill nursed this one back to operation, but it is expected to slide slowly or maybe more quickly downhill over time, like a patient in the ICU with multiple organ failure and an indifferent orderly in the room, tripping over wires. The hard drive is under warranty so they’re sending me a new one, but after I get it I have to wait for Bill to get back into town because it is only his genius and gadgets which will allow me to avoid re-loading all the software. Say a prayer to Saint Oofta for me.

Saint Oofta is also hard at work at my new house, where the fancy, advanced, tree-hugging solar thermal system has ardently resisted coming to life. The system involves both solar panels and a Lillipution boiler (people who have radiant heat systems in their homes all say my boiler is “cute!”) to heat the water in the floor. The control room looks like something off a nuclear sub, with miles of copper tubing snaking around and through a gaggle of gadgets all of which have readouts, knobs and dials. Though I can’t wrap my head around electricity, mechanical things aren’t as hard, and I’m sure I’ll figure out what they all do. Today (knock on wood) is the last day I’ll have easy access to that knowledge, as Bruce the installer should finally be done today. Sheesh, how many times have I said that? Its been weeks and weeks. But this morning he called me at the office just to say that he plugged in the new boiler, turned it on and it fired right up. And to thank me for the coal. I was so dissapointed with him yesterday for calling in sick (the bottle-flu, I suspect), that I hung a Christmas stocking full of coal in the control room for him.