Technical Difficulties

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So first there was the external hard drive crash. Which was enough by itself. It wasn't death in the family bad. However, it was bad like we lost all of the pictures of our children since March bad. Exactly like that in fact.

Actually, that isn't what came first. First I decided to rebuild our primary home computer. This included a new 500 GB hard drive. Which would have been perfectly big enough to hold all of the photographs of Thomas and Caroline. Then we could have used the external drive as a back up drive. That was the plan anyway.

Unfortunately the fancy motherboard I bought for the new build was defective. The problem with a defective motherboard is it's difficult to determine that you have a defective motherboard. I'll spare you the geeky details. Then there was the voltage discrepancy between the board and the memory; the board wouldn't generate enough electricity to power the memory, so the system wouldn't start. Doc Daneeka explained to me that I could install the memory after changing the voltage settings in the BIOS, which I could do when I turned on the computer, which I could do after I installed the memory. Right about the time I was considering shipping the whole thing to Sweden, the external drive died, taking all of our pictures of Caroline's cute little face with it.

A hard drive crash is like cutting your finger with a knife. (Or perhaps getting getting hit by a car.) The instant it happens you realize something traumatic has happened. You deny it for a few moments. Then you search for a way to undo it. After the denial and the dellusions, the pain sets in; blood and curse words spew every which way. Now, if the cut is bad you have two choices. The first choice is to stop the bleeding, slap a store brand bandage on it and let nature takes its course. The second choice is to take yourself and your bloody stump to the Emergency/Urgent/Slighty-Concerned Room and pay someone else a lot of money to do the same thing, but with much better results. The problem with hard drives is that they don't come with health insurance.

We rushed our dying little drive into the hospital. There, men in white suits and a very clean room rescued Thomas and Caroline. Every last image of them. (Plus my iTunes library.) And Liz and I placed a price on our photographs. An embarrassingly huge price that makes me think of starving children. But only for a moment.

On the computer, efforts were redoubled. The mobo was replaced, starter RAM was acquired, another 500 GB drive was purchased and a RAID array configured.

Needless to say, this all took a long time. But it is over. Let the picture publishing commence. All for you cruel internet. And you, vicious vanity page. Be at peace.

Enjoy the pics!

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