Kickin’ it old school
November 5th, 2008
My laptop is in a coma.
I have high hopes that it is not yet dead, but it definitely went kablooey this afternoon and no amount of coaxing from me has been able to resuscitate it.
The timing was impeccable. The 1-year warranty expired a couple of weeks ago. Annalie and I are leaving town with my parents Thursday morning and Troy (our Resident Computer Geek) is gone and doesn’t get home till Thursday afternoon.
At first, I panicked a little bit. Then I thought, Hmm, it might be kinda freeing to not have a laptop to worry about while I’m traveling. My mom does have a decent PC with a high-speed internet connection, so it’s not like I’d be living in 1992 while I’m in Omaha—more like 2006, at the worst. The main inconvenience is that my mom’s computer doesn’t have a decent photo-editing program on it. But now that I have the Nikon D40 that’s not as much of an issue. It’s such a fancy-schmancy camera that the photos I take with it don’t require much editing.
I’ve decided to just take the laptop’s coma in stride. Troy can probably fix it. Even if he can’t, he was pretty sure from what I described to him in an email that it’s not the hard drive that’s fried. We should be able to hook that up to another computer and get photos and stuff off it.
Right now I am using the PC that we still have but have barely used since we became a two-laptop family last year. It’s got old photos on its hard drive from 2001-2007. I figured as long as I was using an old machine, I’d throw some old photos up here, just for fun.
I think I’ve mentioned somewhere before that we used to take photos of Annalie on her pink kitty quilt, so we could see how she had grown from month to month. We only did that a few times. We did better with the teddy bear pictures.
When Annalie was born, Troy’s Aunt Pauline send her a knitted teddy bear with a pink sweater bearing her initials. We took a picture of her next to that bear every month (except for October 2004, when we forgot) for the first year of her life. After Annalie’s first birthday, I made a little photo album on Snapfish and gave copies to all the grandparents and Pauline.
Anyway, if you don’t hear from me much in the next few days, now you know why. I’m laptop-less for a while. But I’m OK with that.
UPDATE: I found another photo of Annalie with the bear!
You will find these photos, along with more detailed notes on each one, in the photoset Annalie and the Bear on Flickr.
November 5th, 2008 at 3:16 am
These are awesome photos! I love how in the 7 month one Annalie is finally wearing the sweater.
November 5th, 2008 at 8:59 am
First, very cute photos.
Second, I have a friend who has a masters in computer science. He has fixed many a computer for us. I don’t know how much he would charge, but I could find out.
November 5th, 2008 at 9:34 am
I love the photo progression, it’s such a great idea. The tiny, tiny baby pics just tug at my heart. I would be so scared of holding and caring for a baby that small.
Enjoy your vacation, with or without your computer!
November 5th, 2008 at 9:34 am
This is the sweetest thing :)
November 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Ohh…I hope the laptop is fixable - isn’t that always the way with technology? I think they are built to break right after the expired warranty! Ah well, but please even if you do get it fixed, for me, please buy an external hard drive and put all your photos on there - then you are not machine dependent and your photos will be safer. Please! You take a ton of photos (like me) and you deserve an external HD to keep them safe! They are a lot cheaper now and also, the speed has gotten better, so you should not see that much difference b/t your computers HD and an external. It’s SO worth it!
November 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Ok, so I was up until all hours last night, watching election coverage with Ross…is that a reasonable excuse for why it took me until the sixth photo to realize these are Annalie? She was such a peanut! Reminds me (and Chris - I made him come look at adorable baby pics) of Ross with her little chicken legs in the second photo.
November 5th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Every single time I think about computer problems, after I hyperventilate, I think of that song from my grade school years.
It goes whirr, whirr, chicka, chicka, bom-bom!
Whirr, whirr, chicka, chicka, bom-bom!
If you want to sing the song,
Whirr, whirr, chicka-bom-bom!
Isn’t that what computers do?
November 5th, 2008 at 11:18 am
Dear Bethany,
please let your laptop know I wish him all the best and a speedy recovery. I’d send him some flowers, but Sonja doesn’t trust me with her credit card number (for good reason, hehe).
10000110111101011
November 5th, 2008 at 2:17 pm
My heart just exploded from all of that cuteness.
(And maybe a little from the thought of your laptop being broken. I. would. die.)
November 5th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Lol…
I love the one she has the bear sweater herself! lol…
SO fun group of pics! agreat treasure to keep!
November 5th, 2008 at 2:52 pm
My insides are swooning. So adorable.
November 5th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
How fun! I love seeing Annalie as a baby. I’d never seen these pics :o) It’s amazing how she becomes recognizable after the fourth or fifth picture. I can see the girl in the baby’s expression and facial features. Ya know what I mean? How neat! I wonder how much of girl Bri I’m already seeing in baby Bri. Does that make any sense at all?
November 5th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
The photos are precious! And I really like that bear!
November 5th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
Oh I love those photos, so cute. I was just looking at photos of Apple last night and I, myself just can’t believe how much she has grown in a year. It is amazing when you have something to compare against.
Have fun in Omaha! Sorry about your laptop, I would be squirrelly without mine.
November 5th, 2008 at 6:30 pm
Great photos…I love watching the changes in people. I ran across a blog once where a family took a picture of each of the family members every single year on the same date. They started when the couple got married and continued as they had children. It was amazing watching the changes…seeing wrinkles and gray move in, watching the boys grow older and fill out into the men they became. Amazing how we change (and yet stay the same).
November 8th, 2008 at 5:52 am
[...] found another photo of Annalie with the bear! This was taken in December 2005 when she was 19 months old. Almost exactly a year after this one [...]
November 16th, 2008 at 1:52 am
[...] the initial moment of panic when my laptop first went into a coma, I really did think Hey, it might be nice to not lug that thing halfway across the country! After [...]