Sure Signs of Impending Doom

I use my computer a lot.

No surprise, right?

There’s blogging. Photo editing. Bill paying. E-mailing. Shopping. Route planning. Travel arranging. Time killing. Entertaining. Enlightening. Etc.

Oh yeah, and work. But I use a different computer for that.

I’m talking about my personal computer, a laptop, which I’ve had for years. It spends most of its time on my desk, tethered to a full-sized monitor and real keyboard. I use it when on-the-move, too. Or when I feel like operating remotely. You know, like when I get tired of sitting in my office and relocate to the family room, patio, or porch.

Like most electronic devices, computers do tend to wear out. Lately, I’ve been noticing odd things happening.  The signs were subtle at first. It would freeze up for no reason at really odd times. Sometimes I’d restart before bed then, in the morning, discover it had never rebooted because of some critical fault error or another.

I knew things were going wrong, but wasn’t too worried.

Then I started hearing banging noises. For real.

We all know that hard drives whirr. Fans do, too. But neither should make clicking noises. Not even small ones. And they sure as heck shouldn’t clank or clunk.

The one sure sign that your computer is about to fail big-time is known to computer nerds as the “blue screen of death” or BSOD.

I guess it was about a week ago that I started seeing those. The computer would just shut down, mid-process, and the horrible blue screen would appear.

That’s when I knew it was time to back up all of my files.

And start shopping.

I’ve ordered a new computer. Now I just need to wait for it to arrive.

If you don’t hear from me for awhile, that’s why.