It seems like every other week I have some piece of modern technology failing me. Recently it’s been my digital camera, then my cell phone, and this week it appears to be my laptop AGAIN. I can’t complain. This laptop has been with me even longer than my children.


My little boy learned to type his name on the computer. A practice which sort of back fired on me when he started telling people his name was “Z I O N space bar L E E”.


All 8 of the members of my family (my parents, brothers, and sister in laws) own Macbooks.

Even baby SJ came to love this titanium member of our clan.


The problem began on Monday afternoon when my charger started smoking. I panicked and J tried to perform an immediate emergency operation with a solder gun (because he is an IT super hero). In the mean time the battery on my laptop was running out.

40%…35%

Come to find out, it wasn’t the charger, it was the actual computer itself and by this time I am down 15% left of my battery power.

“Do you have everything backed up” J says as he peers at the screen trying everything he can to save the poor creature.

“I think so”, but as the words come out I start doubting myself and I begin to sweat.

“Go get your external hard drive!” he shouts.

My heart is pounding as I imagine the thought of loosing everything. I try very hard to make double back ups of all my photos, but there is so much more than that. I start rattling off files to put on the hard drive.

“MY CALENDAR, DOCUMENTS, STICKIES, I DON’T KNOW! I NEED IT ALL! I CAN’T LOOSE THIS COMPUTER.” in the meantime the power is quickly fading like the last grains of sand slipping through an hour glass.

10%… 5%

My mind raced to think of every last item and I remember some recent photos of the kids feeding the ducks and I jumped in front of J to locate the folder myself and transfer it to the hard drive.

“I don’t think it’s going to make it”. J said as we watched the race between the folder that was being transferred and the tiny percent of battery power left on the machine, within seconds everything went black. My heart sank.

Reluctantly J took the charger off of his new laptop. He was hesitant because he had seen what my laptop had done to the other charger, but as he plugged it in, the life came back onto the screen. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but at least there was a glimmer of hope. It’s too soon to really tell the fate of my beloved 17 inch. I am currently using J’s old computer to type this blog, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with all of this.

Am I the only one who has such a tight relationship with my computer? Is there anyone else in danger of passing out if your laptop crashes?