Journal. A Tale of Two Computers.

Yesterday I decided to have a look why Pat could not use the CD writer on this computer. All I could find was the missing drive letter D and looking further, according to the computer D drive did not exist. I gave my friend Brian a ring, told him the symptoms and he said "funny...", I'll come over, I have to go downtown". The CD Writer loaded a disk, spun the disk and nothing else.

Brian duly arrived checked what I'd done already and then proceeded to run a few of his test programs. "H'mm" he said, its probably either a loose plug or its the drive". So we duly pulled the computer apart, and checked the plugs. All OK. Brian then got a spare CD writer, plugged it in and 'hey presto" everything was back to normal. So we left the test drive sitting on top of the computer case until I get a new replacement.

Anthony has been wanting a new computer for a while. He has my old computer but it is now long out of date. He has checked quite a few packages good and not so good. Last Thursday, the day before yesterday he called me to have a look at a computer package offered by Dell which I duly did yesterday, Friday. He wanted a quick answer to what I thought because the offer closed at midnight that day. Anthony rung me at 7.30 p.m., I told him what I thought and he said he would buy it. I said to him to give me a ring after he had ordered it. He laughed and said that it might be midnight as he was dickering about whether or not to get a couple of extra add on's. I said "don't bother.

Its Saturday 2 p.m. now and he hasn't rung yet. I wonder if he did order it over the Internet by the midnight deadline?

This morning I went down to my other friend Gregg at his computer shop and got a new CD Writer kit. I will fit the new drive next week. I never pick Gregg's brains, he probably would offer to look but he is the business professionally and time to him is money. It is an unwritten rule in business not to ask a friend a favour like this. Greg brings his monitors to me to fix and and I take my problems to him to fix or ask elsewhere like my friend Brian who is an avid computer enthusiast.