CRASH TESTS

When my wife’s computer started whirring and stinking up the house, I told her not to worry.  It would correct itself.

It crashed.  No biggie.   She got a new computer.

Then my violinist’s computer crashed.   It was a laptop he carried on every trip.  It was like a Strad to him.  A Stradivarius.  Three days after the crash, he was back online.  No big deal.

My computer crashed.

Big deal. I went nuts.

My real estate data disappeared.  I lost five years of checkbook data.

My computer repairman was dead; he was killed in a freak bicycle accident.  And my back-up computer guy was in medical school — in Hungary.  I couldn’t even write a check, and I didn’t know my bank balance.

I called Quickbooks and got a technician from the Pacific time zone.  Pacific Coast people, they seem smart on the phone. The tech person found the problem — after three hours of phone jabber — and fixed it for $172.  I would have paid triple that.

From yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:  “Triggers for broken-heart syndrome seem as varied as the number of people affected . . . Being overwhelmed by new software at work, seeing a poultry barn burn down, or losing money at a casino all have brought the condition on, doctors say.” The article’s headline was “Hearts Can Actually Break.”

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2 of 2 posts for 2/10/10