Update I: In Which I Talk About Computer Junk

I'm currently in Monrovia using very bad posture as I sit on my reincarnated laptop typing (Maybe I really should clear the desk area in front of the desktop computer here to encourage better posture). I say reincarnated, because I just plugged in my computer's new "soul," have all my documents and programs properly installed into this new vessel.

Since the rest of my computer is the same with the exception of the hard drive, I decided to re-name the computer to Monty, as this really is a derivative of Montel. The only thing missing from this incarnation are my bookmarks from my old computer...well, that's not entirely true. Fortunately, Firefox is able to "export" bookmarks...by way of a basic HTML file that lists all my bookmarks by folder. All I'll have to do now is fire up that page, click on ALL of those links and just bookmark them accordingly! YAY! NOT. At least Internet Explorer allows you to physically transfer those bookmarks from one place to another. Of course, upon installing Firefox into this hard drive, I find this plugin that allows you to keep a copy of your bookmarks on a server and allows you to download it to any computer. Thanks. Had I known about this even 10 hours ago, that would have been really, really helpful. I mean, I could just out this new hard drive and swap it with the old one, upload the bookmarks from the old one to my server then download it here, but I really don't know how that would impact the configuration of things here...I'd rather not risk it unless I know for sure that it won't do any harm. And I'm not about to research it for myself. I've already had a half-working computer for a week when I really needed it and am not willing to mess things up now...especially when I was freaking out more when my CD/DVD drive wasn't responding...

...but the funny thing is, I think my other hard drive is actually okay, more or less. It is true that it was making the all too dreaded clicking sound, and when I was troubleshooting the problem online with a Dell IT guy, BIOS wasn't recognizing it. I was freaking out more and more by the minute as I had the computer running with the hard drive clicking, just thinking of all the data that I won't be able to save because of the scratching that's happening, and then...it just stopped clicking. It was initially thought of as a COMPLETE hard drive failure, but when I risked turning the thing back on the next day armed with a flash drive in hopes I could boot Montel in safe mode and grab as many files as I could before the hard drive failed, it seemed to work okay, at least in Safe Mode...and the next day I had it running normally with no problem...it was a HUGE relief of my part for sure. That meant there was no ticking time bomb of trying to rescue whatever I wanted to salvage, and I was even to come here to transfer any music the computer here didn't have so I'd have all those files PLUS all the music that's been added to that computer since I've last updated!

I was actually working on that old hard drive all week, as my computer couldn't have found a more inconvenient time to crash. Sure, I used it for work, but as soon as it crashed, I refused to use it for work purposes, regardless of hardware replacement. Being able to access the Internet and just having access to a word processor was great, whether I had to use flash drives and Google Docs to transfer information or not.

I still decided to put in the new hard drive and start "from scratch" even if the old hard drive was working again. Why? Something was wrong with it before, and the problem may come back. I elected NOT to renew the warranty for $300. I'm also not going to use this computer for work, so that means it's not being used constantly.

Here's one step towards a new start...