Weird computer happenings

Just off the heals of my recent internet access woes this morning I had another strange thing happen. I came back to my computer after being away and the screensaver wouldn't go away. I pushed the mouse around and punched the keyboard but still nothing. I tried cntl+alt+del but that had no effect so I eventually I just hit the reset button. I wasn't paying too much attention to the reboot process but when I did look up my screen said "operating system not found". I've never seen that before...ever! At first I thought maybe my drive crashed or something like that. I never had that happen before but I figured maybe this is what it would be like. I hit reset again and watched it go through the bootup process and eventually got the same "operating system not found" message again. I just shut it down after that and pondered my next move. I'm handy enough with computers and hardware so all sorts of things were going through my head. The prospect of more downtime and the time I'd need to take getting up again didn't make me too happy. After a short time I fired up my computer again and it booted without a problem. Windows scolded me for shutting down improperly and scanned my C: drive before starting up but that was all. I've been at my computer for most of the afternoon writing emails and such and it's like nothing ever happened. Just in case though I'm backing up the data on the drive to my second drive. A drive crashing may be just around the corner for me.

I'm back!

My internet connection has been out for about 2 weeks. I have a wireless connection and for some reason unknown to me or my ISP my modem wasn't catching a quality signal. My ISP came out and gave me one of the newer modems with the digital readout on the front. There is more than one kind of modem and the one they brought was the kind that connects to your computer via an ethernet cable. I didn't have a network card in my computer so in order to get up and running again I had to go out and get one. My old modem was just connected with a cable into a USB port which as it turns out wasn't like most modems...even the old kind like I had. After I got my network card I plugged in my new modem but I still wasn't getting a quality signal. Then later on Tuesday night I went to check the display on the modem and it had 4 bars for signal quality. I was pretty stunned it was working but it has worked fine ever since. I am only a few hundred yards from the transmission tower and I was the only customer with this problem. Whatever it was I'm back and I feel whole again. Having no internet access is pretty rough now that I'm accustomed to it. I mean I don' t miss it if I'm away on vacation or anything but being around the house I just have a difficult time without it. Among other things, I read the news and follow my investments on the internet. I felt out of touch without this. It's sort of like having a subscription to a newspaper but then suddenly no one delivers for 2 weeks. While it happening it is rather irritating and I felt cranky at times about it. I'm getting a free month of service from my internet provider and I now have the newer updated modem so it's not all bad. I think this is one of those crappy things that happens in life sometimes but in the end doesn't really matter that much. I can think of a lot worse things that could happen. Life without internet access isn't exactly all that rough in the broader scheme of things.