Hardware problem

My desktop computer began to misbehave since early July. It would freeze and shut down intermittently and I had to do extensive testing. This is not what I had planned to spend time on this summer because I had a few other projects to take care online, but I had no choice and had to succumb to boring troubleshooting instead.

After several, and long telephone sessions with the manufacturer's tech support, located half way around the world, I finally convinced the U. S. company to take back my machine for fixing. Fortunately, it 's under warranty for another year, but I miss it terribly.

It's funny that even tracking the repair order, or getting acknowledgment and input from the manufacturer is always handled through email, instead of by phone. The implication is that one should always have a backup system at hand, to avoid going out to use a public one, which may not be nearby or readily available elsewhere.

To write this and briefly handle email during this time, I resorted to revive an old laptop that I still had around. I had cleaned it up and stripped of all programs since it was destined to be eventually discarded, but it's a life saver for now.

It will take time before I can go back to use my desktop again. After the repair is completed, and the computer travels back to me, I'll have to spend a few hours restoring all my applications to get back the functionality of the system I'm accustomed to. I forecast that all this will probably take until the end of this month to complete. Meantime I decided to dedicate myself to another boring task : cleaning up old paperwork and files that I can never see the end of........but this, thanks goodness, can be accomplished in the comfort of my air conditioned place during this unusually hot and steamy NY summer!