As I write this short entry, I have already visited five sites as part of my sixth trip. My first two days were just driving, getting from Florida to southwestern Missouri. On the third day, I visited three relatively close park sites, then settled in a hotel in Joplin, Missouri. It was a tiring day, with about a 60-90 minute drive between each site.
Nonetheless, I set up my laptop ready to make some entries into this blog, only to discover that it would not boot up. It turned on and displayed the manufacturer’s logo for about…well, forever. I suspect the hard drive is not spinning, as the BIOS still sees the drive but it can’t read the boot record.
Fortunately, I brought two laptops on the trip. I’ve done this on a few of my trips using the second one to download video and photos from my cameras (I actually would use both laptops, speeding up the process). This second laptop is smaller (physically) and less powerful than my main one (it had belonged to my father, who just used it for browsing and e-mails). But a slow, working laptop beats a fast, dead one every time.
I spent much of yesterday evening getting software loading onto the second laptop, and setting up the shortcuts and such that I use. It seems ready now, so I will try to catch up in my blog entries (I visited two more sites yesterday and have two on tap for today – it is 7:00 am as I write this), so I am already 5, going on 7, entries behind!
I’m just glad I brought the second laptop. The thought of going another nine days without a computer, and the withdrawal that would entail, was too scary!
I’ve been know to often say “Technology is wonderful until it isn’t”. And as for hard drives, as far back as 30 years ago I remember hearing that “there are two types of hard drives: those that have crashed and those that are going to crash”. My laptop’s hard drive may have just transitioned from one to the other!
Steve
