i lost count of what round this is

Tuesday, November 02, 2004, at 08:32AM

By Eric Richardson

Can I just say that 2004 for me has been the year of the vengeful computer? Obviously the whole server drive debacle is pretty fresh, but that wasn't at all the beginning of it.

It started January 6th, when my laptop started its death spiral. The spiral slowed, though, and must have started pretty high, 'cause after its near-death experience it didn't completely succumb. Instead it committed itself to a life of torture. It's been in that life up to today. If you leave it on too long it'll start to kill itself. The clicking begins, but oddly you can prolong the suffering by tilting the machine a little. It's like the data gets stuck, and you need to loosen it up and help it find its spot on the platter. Eventually though you're waving the laptop like a fan just to keep it moving and it's really not keeping up. That's when you have to shut it down for a day or two and let it recuperate.

January 11, of course, I got back to LA to discover that my desktop drives had been traumatized by a power supply fan failure.

At times I've thought my laptop was getting better, but over the past few days it's put that idea to rest. I think it's finally time for it to be dealt with. Of course now that it struggled out so long the warranty has expired, so any new drive will be on my dime.

I need a profession dealing with something friendlier, like snakes.

Update (4:00pm): I just ordered a new 40gig drive from CDW. It should be here end of the week or so. For now I've set drive spindown timeout as short as possible to give it rest.