Pandora, put the lid back on the box before ... too late.

There's just something missing. Can't quite put my finger on it. Isn't there supposed to be a laptop here??

Tuesday, and there's STILL a gaping hole where Pandora ought to be; I'm STILL borrowing Dave's computer -- which is the wrong setup for me. There's good news and bad news...

The good news: Pandora the Dell Inspiron notebook will be home either late today or early tomorrow.

The bad news: the original harddrive was "worn out" and had to be replaced. Well after six years of continuous use, no real surprise there. Cost to fix: A$330, which will put in  a  500GB solid state HDD, so she'll come back lightning fast. But I'll need to spend two days doing updates to the OS, and another day installing software, so it could be as late as the weekend before I get my oars back in the water. Urk.

Before anyone asks: yes, there is another computer sitting right beside the empty space where Pandora ought to be. That's Thor Junior, or Son of Thor: the custom-built super-system Dave got me for Christmas about five and a half years ago. It's the system I use for CG artwork; and it was deliberately designed to function in "quarantine." It has no modem ... never gets viruses because it's never exposed to the interwebs; never stuffs itself up, because it can't go online and download updates, and unwanted upgrades. In other words, after five years it's never suffered any malady whatsoever and is in exactly the same pristine condition as it was on the day it woke up. But as for using it for Internet stuff?? No modem.

(Or, to put it another way, 99% of the grief we suffer via computers comes in through the modem. You wouldn't believe the peace and quiet you enjoy when a computer doesn't have one. Talk about smooth runnings.)

Right now I have one hope: that there'll be no data loss during the migration to the new drive. Because if I lose data, what I'll actually lose is a lot of creative writing -- short stories and novellas, and notes/outlines for new stories. Why didn't I back it all up before putting the laptop into the shop?? Because I thought it was going in to get the fans cleaned and the heat sink checked. Anyway, the specialist swears up and down that there will be no data loss, so I'm going to have a little faith: worst I can do is lose my bookmarks and passwords, as stored in Opera, right? Right.