The day of the electronic gremlins

Today has been a total nightmare in the technology area. The computer shop had called a few days ago to say that the computer was dying and basically not worth fixing. The guy did say that they had made a copy of everything on the hard drive, and today Marty went to pick it up. I figured I could use it in its current state (very slow to boot up, and running programs slowly) for awhile, until I decided what to do long range.

Judy was here again today, as Marty was out most of the day. In between errands, he stopped at the computer store to get the computer, and as he was leaving again Caren, one of my hospice volunteers, stopped by. Both she and Tim have good computer skills and it looks like they will be very helpful in making sure the invitations go out, and that we keep tabs on who will be coming. Marty briefly explained to her what we needed to do, and she and I started working on putting together a list of names and e-mail addresses that the invitation will be sent to. It was at this point that we discovered that my computer would not boot up at all.

I was getting some of the names from my Palm Pilot, which is backed up on my computer. It is an old model that runs on batteries, and I got a message that the batteries were low and needed to be changed. I said to Caren, nervously, that every now and then, when changing batteries, the Palm Pilot would erase all the data and it had to be restored by pulling the data off the computer using the plug-in cradle. With all the electronic gremlins on the loose, I was really nervous about doing it, and sure enough, when I put in the new batteries and pressed the "on" button, I got the message that there was no data. I wanted to scream!

Caren said that she had Palm software on her computer at home, so I called the computer store to find out about how to get the material that they had copied off my hard drive, and was astonished when the guy told me that, basically, they would copy it back onto another computer or drive for $89! Caren promised that she would go to the place once she left my house and talk them into giving her the Palm and AOL files, which she did, and she called me later in the day to say she had the disc but would not have a chance to work on it until this evening.

Meanwhile, she and I were getting the names off the Palm (until it died) and my AOL account that I could access through aol.com, and putting them into a single address book, a job I've continued to do during the rest of the day. But all these frustrations were making me feel very tired, and I was looking forward to my acupuncture appointment with Anne, as that usually makes me feel relaxed and calm.

Acupuncture, as always, was very restful, and I was hoping to sleep. Judy helped me back to bed, but although I was exhausted, I couldn't sleep, and didn't until mid-evening, when I napped for an hour or so. I've just had a light snack and hope to be going to sleep for the night pretty soon.

Meanwhile, my answering machine is full and can't handle any more messages, and I'm afraid if I touch it it will blow up!