Reconstituted Faith

Sometimes I surprise myself, though not with unexpected gifts or anything that thoughtful or touching.

One of my more successful ways of fixing things is to leave them alone and see if they repair themselves. To my constant amazement, they often do, but not as often or consistently as I'd like.

About a week ago I swore it was all over for my main desktop computer. After surviving the intermittant ISP issues, I thought it was all better only to hear a nasty and heart-stopping clicking sound issuing from the hard drive. I've heard that before, more times than I care to recall, and it's always been followed by complete and total failure of the drive.

Then, a few times, the computer locked up, and I was sure that it had, at most, a half an hour of life left in it. I panicked. The old me, the one I'm used to, would have thought nothing of buying a new drive, moving everything over, and missing at most a couple hours. The old me, also, had money to burn and never thought twice about such things.

I'm sure the drive is still liable to fail at any time, but it's stopped clicking. Also, I was able to prevent it from locking up by the simple expedient of reseating the batteries in the mouse. Okay, I'm dumb. Never claimed otherwise.

This particular computer, by the way, is interesting mostly because it was the second new computer I've bought in my life. All the others have been incremental upgrades and I've got shoeboxes full of drives I've outgrown or otherwise outlasted, no fewer than seven cases (after throwing an equal number away last year), and entire shelving units filled with spare parts that are now woefully obsolete.

This entry has produced no clicking, but I'm scared to try e-mail.