Computer

Last night I was REALLY mad at the computer, technology and myself.
It's bad enough that our hard drive is crashing, but I wasn't too worried because I could still read files from it while we waited for the new one to come. Well, the newly purchased one came, and the warranty replacement is in the mail. But now, I can't read anything on the old disk. It's completely failed. I was all ready last night to start making backups of my 50gb of music and 20 gb of pictures and other "personal" files like tax returns, etc, when all of the sudden the system wouldn't see it anymore. I popped it out and hooked it to a laptop I borrowed form work... no go. ^%$^!@@*&(%^@# !!!
WHY didn't I just back the crap up when it WAS working, all this and last week? Well, I'll tell you - because I was waiting for the replacement. But I COULD have done it on the spare drive I was using in the interim. It wasn't big enough for everything I wanted to save, but most of it would have fit OK.

So while I'm fiddling with this trying to get the system to read it one last time so that I can slavage my files and what happens? The monitor goes black. WTF? I thought my video card blew, but a computer will normally beep at you if no video is being pushed out when you reboot. There was no beep. Thankfully I still have "the beast" in the basement. A Samsung 19" CRT 50lbs monster that has been the best monitor I've used to date. So I lug that up and plug it in. Hey, there's the screen, no problem. The other monitor is still black... my blood is boiling at this point. To begin with, I'm really, REALLY mad at myself for not saving the files when I had the chance to, and then the monitor quits on me... F'ing great!!
To give you some background on the monitor, I bought it refurbished. It was a great monitor that was very hard to find at the time as the LCD panel in it is not used very much anymore and being phased out for cheaper tech. It produces a far superior picture than most LCD's. "I got a deal". But it's been a lemon. I should have returned it right away, 1st day. The first time I powered it on, there was a black line down the middle. After fiddling with it, it disappeared for a while then reappeared, so I called Viewsonic and had an RMA made up. No problem - I was happy with that. The replacement came, but this one had problems too. The green pixels sort of flickered, then after some time went away. I called them back and explained the problem. I said I'd monitor it for a week and see what happens. It went away and hasn't been back since. Now it's black and dead. It powers up and tells me "no signal detected". A typical message when you turn on the monitor, but not the computer... I have yet to call them, but it's almost pointless to do so since it's out of warranty. Fixing it would probably cost me the price of a new monitor anyway, but I'll wait and see what they say and what our options are.
Did I mention that I got a deal on it?

I did at least manage to save one DVD worth of recent pictures onto a USB memory key when the drive first started to crash. I should have continued and did everything when I had the chance... should have could have. A hard lesson to swallow.
Maybe we'll get lucky and the drive will power up one last time for me, but I'm not holding my breath. Once the replacement drive comes, I have 30 days to return it, or they'll charge me $150. The drive is worth $80, maybe.