It has been almost two months since my last post, and I now feel like the world’s most negligent blogger!
Last May, I purchased a premium Gateway computer, complete with all the bells and whistles, and then, within weeks, I learned that Acer had acquired Gateway. Now, I’ll admit that I know very little, really, about computers or big business, so that may be a good thing. But, we’ll see.
But now on to my story. By August, my computer screen began to abruptly go black, and I started receiving messages from my computer saying that I had a fatal hardware problem and that I should save all my data on another drive before the hard drive failed completely (my paraphrase, but you get the gist). Over the next several months, I continued to regularly have a black screen accompanied by those messages.
I would call Gateway, and they always took me through some sort of software gymnastics, and all the while I was saying, “But the computer says it’s a ‘hardware’ problem. Can I have someone just look at the computer? There’s a real problem here … I’m still under warranty …” Well, while we continued in this fashion, I was (wisely) saving my material to an external hard drive.
Then, a few days after my last post, I again got a black screen with some unintelligible gibberish and this time I was unable to recover any data. I once again called Gateway and finally got a responsible person at Gateway’s service center. His words to me were that my hard drive was “disintegrating” and that I should send in back to the factory (post-paid, of course).
In the meantime, I was in the final stages of having my new book The Forgotten Future: Adolescents in Crisis published, and fretting about marketing of same, not being able continue to work on my web site, worrying about my blog, and a myriad of other things.
Anyway, Gateway put in a new hard drive, my book is out (buy it–you’ll really like it), and this is my blog post for today. Also, remember to visit my web site and send me a comment, ask a question, or tell me what you think should be added there.
For now, I’m glad to be back, and I’ll see you soon!
