Another One Bites the Dust

This morning I got a call from my son in college. I could tell by the stress in his voice that something bad had happened and I waited for him to let me know what it was. He was working on his laptop computer when it froze. This was very unusual as he uses a Mac. When he rebooted, he got the icon of a disk with a question mark on the screen and immediately knew that he had lost his hard drive. Then he called me.

My first question was what assignments he had due that were lost on the computer. Luckily there was only one and it isn't due until tomorrow. I informed him that he would probably have to redo it and he wasn't keen on the idea of taking another four hours to complete an assignment he had done before. He was also halfway done with a computer programming project that would need to be started again.

I was glad this was my son who likes to get things done early and not my daughter who waits until the last minute. Furthermore, he had gotten ten hours of sleep last night and is rested enough to pull an all-nighter this evening if it becomes necessary.

The next task was to assess the best way to get a temporary computer until we could get together on the weekend and see about fixing his current one. The university where he is attending school rents laptops for $35/month. The government just awarded my son an extra $2,000/semester scholarship because of grades and his math/science major. So $35 is not going to put too much of a strain on his finances.

Our final step was to figure out the timing of everything. While a new computer is nice to pick up, you can spend countless hours configuring it which can distract even the most disciplined student from getting more important things done. My son had an hour before his next class and so he was going to assemble his notes for the paper that disappeared. He would then go to class before heading to a computer lab where he could work on getting his assignment in. Finally, he would pick up a rental computer.

I then had my son call my wife to see if she could help out with anything. She decided to give up her computer for the rest of the week as she can use the family computer until my son can come home and we can work on fixing his. She then drove the hour down to my son's university to deliver the computer. She also took my son out to dinner. What a nice Mom.

Last weekend I got to relax and go sailing. It looks like this weekend I get to fix my son's computer. That's OK, I get plenty of time to relax during the week when I am out in California.