October 19: #73 Tech issues

Technology is great - when it works, we all know that. What I've found though as I've struggled through most of 2010 with my recalcitrant laptop is this - you can never be too organized. My problems started when my main laptop decided to blue screen. It went to the chop shop twice and aftwewards seemed to be OK, but then it started doing something completely ridiculous - I couldn't move files. So - we bit the bullet and bought Windows 7 and bye bye Vista. Thank goodness I had a netbook, and my partner gave me a spare laptop ... which is rather like having a spare car on the drive just in case the one you usually drive doesn't want to work every other day.

Problem solved. I could give back the spare computer I had borrowed from my partner, re-load the mail send program onto the laptop and voila... Minor problem, I had downloaded some pics onto the hard drive of the borrowed computer for the discard 100 things gallery - so will need to borrow that computer again for about 5 minutes to send them to myself.

So, the re-load was working beautifully, the laptop was doing everything it was expected to do, and then the wireless router decided it wasn't going to play anymore. Well at the time we didn't know it was the wireless router. Trial and error finally picked it up. So a couple of apologies

• The gallery is missing a couple of pics, but these will be loaded. I am still doing the cleaning, the sorting and the pic taking - which was the whole point of the challenge exercise.
• Similarly the 100 posts are missing for a couple of days, but I have my journal notes so - again these will be loaded in a day or two. And
• You have missed out on a couple of issues of the Daily Dose of Motivational Medicine - sorry about that, but we'll pick up the pace again soon.

So - what lessons are to be learned from all this?

• Many - not least of which always save the wretched pics to one place. I do have an external hard drive, I should have used it.
• Don't delete the pics from the camera too soon...that way I could re-download them - I did delete them, so now can't...
• Nick the cable from out of the back of the main computer and use it via my laptop to send you the messages / post the blogs / pics

As I always tell my kids, there is always a lesson or two to be learned from everything, especially the bad. The trick is to learn from them so you don't have to repeat the lessons.