God Smote My Computer

Wednesday morning saw some pretty strong thunderstorms in our area. And by in our area, I mean in my front yard. At approximately 8:20 My Dell Dimension 8250 expired suddenly, an event announced by a blinding light and a deafening thunderclap. I gently prodded the power button a few times in disbelief, but when the little guy couldn't even muster a little *beep*, I knew it had given up the ghost. The undertakers at Computer Alley confirmed that the cause of death was indeed a fried motherboard.

And yes, I was using a surge protector.

After two days working off a laptop in the purgatory of Panera Bread, I'm pleased to report that I'm back surfing the Internets from home this afternoon, with a sharp-looking and more powerful new system. It's a custom-built job featuring dual 4.2 processors (well, the AMD equivalent) and pretty blue LED lights (oooh! Shiny!)

They were able to save the old hard drive, and install it as a back-up of sorts, which saved a huge amount of time in trying to salvage all my old data. Thank the Lord I saved a backup copy of the installer software for my DirecWay satellite internet connection. I thought getting my sat connection working again would be a nightmare, but it turned out to be pretty simple. For someone who uses his PC to put food on his family, it's crucial to have all the accumulated e-mails, Web bookmarks and e-mails to refer back to.

It wasn't easy -- and I'm a long way from having all the old software up and running -- but I was able to get the system work-ready in about four hours. And I get a DVD burner, a huge new hard drive and twice as much RAM in the bargain.

Set me back a few bones, though.