Casualties of Moving

As most of you know, we recently moved to Towson, a Baltimore area suburb. We did our best to pack everything as carefully as we could to make sure that nothing broke in transit. As we begin unpacking our many boxes, we have come across our first casualty of the move -- our computer!

It is really a stretch to call it a casualty of the move. When I disassembled the computer to move it, it already had a blank black screen. We did not pack it because it was moved in our car as a precaution, something we had planned to do anyway. When the computer arrived in Baltimore, we set it up and quickly realized our worst fears - the computer had indeed crashed. When booting the computer, I continually get a blue screen error message stating that Windows has shut itself down to prevent further damage to the computer.

I can't really blame anything for the computer crash. The computer is five years old (ancient and antique in the computer world). We needed to replace it anyway. I have taken the computer to the Geek Squad at Best Buy (didn't know where else to take it having just moved) and they are going to try to retrieve the data from the computer. While it went against my better judgment because of cost, I asked them to repair it as well, assuming it is repairable. This really is more to buy us a little more time until the sell of our house closes and we can get a new computer. Luckily for us we have a laptop that I bought last year for school. Unfortunately, the data on the desktop that may not be recoverable is our checkbook (in Quicken) and several songs from iTunes that had not yet been synced with our iPod.

Hopefully both will be recoverable and we won't lose any money we paid for the any of the iTunes songs. I can reinstall the Quicken and recover the data from my backup (yes, I have a backup of our checkbook), if I could just figure out what box they are packed it. It is maddening trying to go from day-to-day without knowing exactly how much money you have to spend -- and because of the move having to spend money like crazy to get things done. We can always check on the balance online, except that we don't have internet service yet! We are having to use the free Wi-Fi at Dunkin Doughnuts, which isn't exactly free considering you feel obligated to buy something while you are there. Besides, their internet access is not secure and even if it was, the online balance may not be correct because it doesn't show checks that have been presented until after they post. Good news is that we are getting internet, phone and TV installed on Thursday. Hopefully as we get these little things accomplished, we will begin to feel settled.