Recycling and Resurrection
A little while after finishing chores last night and sitting down quietly to survey the remains of the evening, my eldest daughter sidled up to me, and carefully volunteered that there might be something not quite right with her computer. I put my hands on my knees, and lifted myself back out of the chair I had just sat in, and followed her back to her bedroom.
'What's wrong with it?'
'I don't know – it went wrong this morning'
We turned the corner into her bedroom, and I saw the screen.
'Oh.'
Windows had failed to start, and was failing to recover too – repeatedly. I went back to the junk room, and built a diagnostic USB stick – a pre-built copy of linux that will boot, and allow you to check things. It became obvious pretty quickly that the hard drive had failed.
'Don't worry – you haven't lost anything – all your stuff was saved in Google Drive, and Google Photos'.
'What about my games on Steam, and my Sims?'
'Oh – yeah – they've gone'
She took it remarkably well really. She seemed more concerned that I was still in her room an hour after summoning me, but was also somewhat impressed that I was able to dismantle the computer, swap the hard drive out for a still working one bastardised from something else, and that it all worked again afterwards.
So yeah. There are advantages to having a nerd as a Dad. Sometimes. Suddenly I'm not quite so boring when my skills are needed.
Most memorably moment of the evening was pulling the side off the computer, and discovering an enormous house spider dead inside the case – covered in enough dust to make it look like a camoflaged tarantula. I thought my eldest was going to pee her pants in fear, but eventually got enough courage up to transport the very dead spider to the rubbish bin on a piece of paper.