Daily Archives: May 15, 2013

I woke up at 5am and looking back I should have stayed in bed. Instead I got up and did last night’s dishes, made coffee, started the generator, put in a load of wash and turned on the watermaker. I sat down with my coffee and the laptop figuring I’d get a full backup going. Last night we had sundowners and a book and movie exchange with a neighboring cruiser and it occurred to me at the time that I hadn’t backed up for a while. So that’s this morning’s chore. Except that the computer won’t start.

I initially thought it was hard drive failure, but I don’t even get to the BIOS screen. I went online on the iPad and searched for any troubleshooting tips but got nothing helpful. If anyone can point me in the direction of full revival of a dead computer, please chime in. Power button lights up for a second, no other activity, then the light goes out.

So I have a computer that won’t boot up with a hard drive that contains a lot of photos and genealogy data and personal records that haven’t been backed up for about two months. Great. I decided to use the other laptop and put the hard drive from the first one in there to at least effect a backup. No, the hard drive is a different configuration, or at least I don’t have the necessary cabling to make that happen. Besides, it turns out that laptop isn’t working either. Well it’s working but the keyboard isn’t. The Bluetooth keyboard that I have to use with it because the built in one doesn’t work. Man, the marine environment is so hard on laptops! Thank goodness for the iPad, which doesn’t seem to be affected by anything.

So, I can’t access genealogy data, financial records, photos, music, movies or anything else on with computer. What to do?

I took a break and did a little cleaning. That’s when I noticed that a dehumidifier bag of water absorbing crystals had burst in my closet soaking half the clothing. My half. And the cedar closet walls and floor. So in this dense humidity I have all my clothes out on the bed, and I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that the closet will dry out any time soon.

Come to think of it, maybe it’s the humidity that’s affecting the computers. I only hope the day improves from here.