Lappy is Back

I had quite the scare last week as my beloved laptop- "Lappy"- as I affectionately call him (I wish that I could take credit for this name but it actually came from Strong Bad's computer on Homestarrunner.com- BTW, if you haven't checked out his emails, you should cuz they are HILARIOUS) was having major problems. On Wed evening last week, William's birthday precisely, Lappy was not making the connection from his power cord to the laptop. I thus went into a panic because it has ALL of my research on it (not to mention music and photos) and I had not backed up recently. Fortunately, it was after William's birthday dinner but it still was a major freak out moment and it ruined the rest of the night. I was able to hold the cord in at a specific angle to just get power and William quickly burned my research files and then started on my music and photos- and only got partway through them before Lappy died. I cannot even begin to tell you the amount of relief I had knowing that at least my data was safe. I have most of the photos in various places so it would have been sad to lose some of them, but really, I was just happy to have my current files.

I took it into Radio Shack the next day as William thought that the problem might be the power cord. It turns out that it wasn't the cord but something "inside the computer" (which I later learned is called the power jack) and so I would have to take it to a different store. I Google Mapped the closest repair shop at it turned out to be right at the end of our street and it was called "Quick Fix". And let me tell you that they lived up to their name. I took in Lappy on Friday where they confirmed the diagnosis that Lappy had a loose/broken power jack. They could replace it but it might take up to a week since I have a not-so-common brand of laptop (Averatec). I was just so happy that they could fix it because I have a special coding program on my computer for my dissertation and was sad to lose it. To my complete shock and utter delight, the Quick Fix geniuses were able to fix Lappy in a few hours since its the same part as an HP!!!! And it was a relatively cheap fix if you ask me (much cheaper than a new laptop) and I had my beloved Lappy back.

And so, I am writing this entry while on Lappy and the major take-home lesson from this whole experience is to BACK UP MY DATA more frequently than I was doing so I'm glad that I just had a little warning experience and not a total disaster.