Monday, February 09, 2009

Taking Hold

As I noted way back at the end of October, my computer failed just a day after we drove home from Heart Lake through a snow storm that delayed us and turned a three hour trip into an eight hour trip.

The problem was diagnosed as hard drive failure and I paid around $1,000 for data recovery. I bought a new hard drive and I finally got my computer back just before Thanksgiving. In the meantime, I was using Liz’s notebook computer. Well, it soon became apparent that there was still something wrong with the computer, as it kept giving me the blue screen of death. So I took it back to the shop.

I picked it up again on December 3rd; the diagnosis was a software problem. However, I soon began encountering bluescreens again, so I took it back once more. The technician, Irit, took quite a long time to pin down the problem. I was away twice, she had a bad case of flu, but finally, after a good deal of trial and error, she determined that the problem was the video card, which unfortunately is part of the motherboard, so I needed a new computer. Since I had already spent so much on data recovery, I looked hard for a desktop replacement laptop for under $700.

Now I finally have my new computer and have finished the slow process of installing all of the software I normally use. It’s been a long three months. I still have to clean up behind myself on Liz’s laptop and I have a lot of catching up to do. But I don’t feel crippled anymore.

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I’m Back

On Monday afternoon, around 4:45 pm, Liz and I arrived home from our Florida trip. I’m very happy we went and especially happy that I got to see my Aunt Joyce and my cousins Eric and Sven in Miami.

When we got home, as we came into the building we saw a notice that our neighbor Bob Seaver, a retired professor at Union Theological Seminary, had died last Wednesday. Then when we up to our tenth floor apartment, we discovered that our next door neighbor, Aimee Scheff, had died early Sunday morning.

Both funerals are this afternoon -- Aimee's at 2 pm at a funeral chapel on 91st Street and Amsterdam Ave. and Bob's at 4 pm at The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, at 112th Street, also on Amsterdam Avenue. So they are a mile apart. It remninds me of the time we had invitations to two weddings, one at the cathedral and one at St. Michael's Church, at 100th Street and Amsterdam. It was not possible to attend both weddings, we had to pick one and go to both receptions. It will be possible to attend both funerals.

We didn't have high speed internet access for most of last evening, so we didn't check all of our emails. This morning we saw that there are some delightful new pictures of our granddaughter Amanda. I'll be posting one or two of them later -- as well as some pictures from our trip.

I'm still using Liz's laptop, since mine is still in the shop -- I'm betting I'll need a new one, but until I know definitely whether the problem is the video card or the motherboard, I'll keep hoping.

Greetings to all, especially my cousin Eric my only follower), my cousin Sven, and my Aunt Joyce. Gotta get dreesed for the funerals. Bye.

UPDATE 8:45 PM

We didn't get to the second funeral after all -- we spent the afternoon in a lunch with Aimee's brother and sister-in-law and several Morningside Gardens friends.