When it rains, it pours!

I know you've all heard the saying. Let me illustrate how true it's been for us this past week. Saturday morning I got up, did the usual with Marcella, and went to turn our computer on to check my email. For Kanien and I, our computer is the most central technological fixture in our lives. It's probably like the TV was to 1950's and 1960's families...it's almost always on, either for email, blogging, photos, movies, pictures, or games. When it didn't turn on, I started the normal troubleshooting routine I've grown accustomed to in the last 15 years. We've had the machine around 2 years, which seems to be the lifespan for someone who always wants more computing power and better performance. I know some of my family members have had computers for 10+ years and are still running Windows 3.1, but I don't work that way. (To me that'd be like refusing a church calling or rooting for BYU.) When the fix looked to be around $200 dollars, I consulted Kanien and we decided to upgrade instead of replace the bad hardware with its equivalent. So I drove to Salt Lake, bought the components, and started home.

Kanien and I had been debating paying our car off, or getting some things fixed that have needed fixing and continuing making payments for 6 more months. We finally decided to pay it off, reasoning we'd better do it now while we had the money, or we'd end up squandering it on other stuff. She transferred the money on Saturday after I had gone to Salt Lake. She was worried about what she calls "The Dougal Curse," coming into effect, a family condition that regulates any attempts to get ahead by bringing horrid luck down on you and your acquaintances. I had a feeling of foreboding as well, and when I was less than a mile from home, I struck something on the road (not quite sure what it was...just that it was made of hard metal), and punctured a hole in our oil pan.



As I pulled up to our apartment, the oil light came on (along with a bunch of tones and warnings I'd better stop driving...thanks VW). I got out to examine the damage. Oil was pouring onto the pavement. The car wasn't going anywhere. I called Kanien, then the insurance to file a claim. I know an oil pan is less than $200 to replace, but I didn't know what else the mystery object had struck, and I wanted to be covered in case there was other damage. They couldn't really do anything until Monday, anyway. Kanien's parents were nice enough to drive Nathan's surplus auto down to us, and we were saved from complete immobility.

I proceeded to assemble the new components, and ran into some problems, which is pretty much par for the course. When we built the original PC, I had installed a RAID array, which is two hard drives assembles so each file is split and copied 1/2 to each drive. This increases the speed at which your machine operates, but it also decreases the fault tolerance of the disk, as an error on one drive corrupts the entire array. I was able to get the drive back online long enough to rescue all of our pictures, but transferring it to another RAID controller didn't work, and they were corrupted in the process. It only took about 6 hours of my time to figure this out, but it felt like a week, and left me pretty distraught.

That's what I was working through on Monday when the tow truck came to take the car away. Marcella was down for her nap, and I went out to help the guy with the car. I made sure I had keys so I could get back in the house. After Jim had towed the car away, I realized I'd given him the keys to the car, and no longer had a house key. It was then that this nexus of misfortune seemed to culminate, and in a moment driven by both need and frustration, I opted to kick the door in, instead of calling a locksmith. It gave on the first kick, and didn't really do that much damage.

I'm no longer worried about our PC or our car, but have this large feeling of insecurity that has taken its place. Maybe we need better doors!