I replace the RAM which was faulty, but the hard drive is corrupted, too. I don't want to do anything major to it, with Julie's photos in it, etc, but equally I don't think their is anything on it so valuable as to go out and spend 'businesslike' sums getting files recovered. I still have a few other things to try. It does seem odd that both the Hard Drive and the RAM should die. Or did one go and pull the other one down? Did I pick up a virus (even though I had Norton's installed). Maybe I should never have offered to get a friend some tracks of a band called No Doubt, and tried Kazaalite. Harrumph. Downloaded a few tracks, but didn't run them or scan them. Paranoia, basically.

I may have to go get a new hard drive and rebuild from scratch, which is always fun, NOT. Still, you end up with a clean system.

When a PC goes down with all data, it really is some kind of metaphor for dying. Backups are the written records you've left, or the shared experiences and anecdotes remembered by friends. All the other, private, knowledge just seems to go......Not feeling too Buddhist today.

And I walked into work to find there is no water in the building so we are not open to the public. Then later I hear water is pouring through the ceiling, splashing over books, but landing straight on one of the new PCs we installed just a week ago. Strange stuff, having just seen Donnie Darko. I didn't do it in my sleep, honest!