Last week, I had a couple papers due. I had written drafts of both, and on Wednesday morning, I suddenly had neither. I tried to turn on my computer, and it did not happen. The repair guy tried to recover the data from the now-broken hard drive, but he said it would only be possible if he sent it to some place that would charge $2,000.

Now, the data on there was worth a lot to me, but it isn't worth 6 Matt Newsomes! After getting extensions and rewriting the papers, it dawned on me that I had lost all my pictures, all my music, all the poems I'd written, all the papers I'd written, and on and on and on.

So, I am writing here to give you guys a friendly warning: Invest in an external hard drive. Back your stuff up. A hard drive costs maybe $80. I've already spent more than $100 in tech support, not counting the cost of replacing my current drive!

Also, for any mac users who feel like they can ignore this, my computer is a mac. It is three years old, true, but I take very good care of my computer (after looking at my keyboard and screen protectors etc, the tech support guy told me the hard drive was pretty much the only thing on my computer that could break).

Summary: Get an external hard drive, back up your stuff. If you want to pay more for a better hard drive, go ahead, but you really don't need to pay more than about $80. And it is very worth it.

Funny how dependent we are on machines that were pretty unheard of a quarter of a century ago, eh?

Your pal,
Matt!