It died, I didn't kill it, honestly.

     Back in the waning days of this year's The-Winter-That-Would-Not-Quit, I mentioned in a post that I touched and killed the central CPU of my network and was forced to replace it with a new Dell.  Well, my Midas Touch has worked its magic again.
     The new (3 month old) server had streamlined some of my operations, all the software had been transferred and with very few exceptions, without the need to purchase new licenses, and over 70 hours of music had been ripped so that every workstation could share my eclectic playlists.  The faster, more powerful machine was a welcomed addition to my technology dependant business and life.
      I swear to you, I never opened the case.  It wasn't my fault.  Okay, maybe it was my fault, but I never opened the case.
      The hard drive crashed.  Someone once said, "Life is good."  I'd like to meet that person, follow him around, observe and take notes.  I am obviously doing something wrong, or I have a complete misunderstanding of the word GOOD.
      The inanimate brains behind my organization was/is under warranty.  The company sent a Fed Ex hearse out to collect the remains for interment.   The flatlander driver was too paranoid to attempt the drive up the mountain, so I had to throw the dead carcass in my truck and drive down to meet him at the end of the public road.
      In five to seven business days, I will receive a new replacement, sans software, music, and approximately 20 hours of network configuration.  Oh goody!  I get to do that all over again.  
      In the meantime  the printer and scanner are idle.  I could, I guess, do a temp install on one of the laptops, but that's probably not worth the effort.  The barcode reader, external drives, and the other varied and sundry devices are portable enough to be moved to a different location, leaving my office as a nice storage room, with a 24" HD monitor waiting patiently to be mated with some new unnamed stud.  And I am relegated to working from one of my alternate work stations (did I mention without music?!?) 
      I love technology, I have since my first pager in 1980, my first

PC (an AT&T Unix machine that cost over $10,000 because I had to upgrade to a 40 meg hard drive!), and even my first cellphone-in-a-bag.  
     While writing that last paragraph, an ancient memory popped into my head.  Shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs, I had doubled up on trigonometry and calculus trying to squeeze all eight available highschool math courses into three years, prepping for an early graduation.  One of the teachers informed us that we could, if we desired, buy one of those calculating devices to use in class.  I paid $88.00 for a 5x9" machine that required 4 C batteries, only

added, subtracted, multiplied and divided, with no memory, no printing, and no other functions.  It was the best that money could buy and not a tenth as powerful as those credit card sized things that insurance companies always give you when you renew your policy.
     Anyway, in the modern days of smart phones with more computing power than the technology that took man to the moon,  life may be good, but only if you boot up successfully each morning, and so do your computers.