dreaming of a byte christmas

Christmas came early this year.

At least, for Julio.

For the past two years, I have been using a Samsung ultrabook as my sole computer. It was small, lightweight, and very fast. The perfect companion to keep in touch on my travels.

In late October, it died. Rather, its solid state hard drive died. I could do nothing to revive it. And, because I was headed off to the highlands on a trip, I needed a substitute to keep the essays flowing.

My shopping trip to Manzanillo turned out to be frustrating. Replacing my Samsung was not possible. My second choice, a Microsoft Surface, was even harder to find. None of the stores carried it.

So, I settled for an entry-level ultrabook made by Lenovo that had very few features I wanted. But it did get a laptop in my hands for my day of the dead adventures.

Fortune then smiled on me. My sainted brother, the very person who persuaded me that a Microsoft Surface was in my future, brought the computer on which I am now typing when he and Christy made their regular appearance on the Mexpatriate show in early December (a new mexpatriate).

That left me with an extra computer at my work station. And I knew who was going to be the recipient -- my pal Julio, the manager of Rooster's. He had recently suffered the demise of his computer, and I knew he would like the speed of the Lenovo.

So, today, Darrel and I took the computer (with its factory settings restored) to Julio. Even though he knew it was coming his way, he was pleased to open his stocking and find a Lenovo in his future.

The Paul Harvey portion of my computer story involves Darrel's attempt to restore some of the data from my defunct Samsung. We had no luck. It appears the boot sector performed a Nancy Sinatra.

But, not to worry, said I. I have a wireless backup of everything on the Samsung hard drive. If we cannot retrieve the data from the Samsung, we can restore it from the backup drive. Or so I thought.

It appears my backup has not been working properly. The only backup set is the same one we used to restore the Samsung two years ago after my other Samsung was stolen from my realtor's car on the day my house closed.

I would draw some big moral lesson here about religiously checking the status of backup drives. But I won't.

The moral lesson, if there is one, is that most of us probably do not need most of the data on our computers. I have lost all of my tax documents for the past two years. But the chances of an IRS audit are slim. And I can survive with the few things I was able top salvage from two years ago.

So. let's all wish Julio a happy Christmas, and tell him to stop criticizing my Spanish.