On the Fritz

On Christmas Eve we had a little power failure. Both Skip and I were working on our respective computers. When the power came back on, his computer booted, mine did not. Since then, I've been making do with my 5 year-old Toshiba laptop but don't have it connected to a printer as of yet. I need to download the drivers but it slows the connection down so much we can't use our computers so I'll have to start the download after Skip goes to bed.

Skip is a Mac user, I am not. The word processing program I'm most comfortable using is Word Perfect. It was free to schools in Ontario so that is what I used exclusively during my teaching career and since I retired.  Word Perfect is not compatible with Skip's Mac computer so if I want to print something, I compose the file in Word Perfect, publish it to PDF. Then I e-mail it to Skip's computer, 2 rooms and approximately 20 feet away and he prints it. Fortunately, I haven't had to print much lately, however I have been working on my notes for my sock knitting class on Saturday so I had to get him to print them for me.

Although I purchased an external hard drive a few months ago, I haven't been using it all the time to back up my files. I've been too lazy to figure out how to set it to back up only the files I've added or saved since the last backup. The last time I backed up all my files was near the end of November. Since then I prepped for my sock-knitting course which I begin teaching this Saturday. I also had saved a few photos since November. I am keeping my fingers crossed that the nice people at the computer repair shop will be able to boot up my computer and I'll be able to retrieve my files. Just in case they can't I spent most of last night ('til 2am !) re-creating the file for my sock-knitting lesson.

Right now my desk is SO messy, with computer cables everywhere - some not hooked up to anything, some hooked up to my laptop. And then there's all the knitting needles and yarn...