Computer limbo; hard drive lives are over twice as quickly as dogs lives

In somewhat of computer limbo these days.

Am accessing the Internet through a hard drive that is definitely on life support, so far held out for 6+ years (like dog years are 7:1 wonder if someone should start hard drive years approx. 14:1).

My new 120GB seagate and previous maxtor storage drive 60GB are in the shop. Basically they're porting over all the data to the 120GB drive and I'll reformat the maxtor to be my system drive. Apparently there was a problem with data recovery and now they're having to use "low-level tools" to recover my stuff "sob".

So no posting to Flickr because my usual workflow = images transfer from Canon 350D > computer > quick edits via Picasa > upload to Flickr.

175 jpegs waiting to upload (mostly "before" pictures for our new place), but also some from recent biz trip to Spain.

James Kim story really affected me...

It's a story about a family that takes a wrong turn, gets lost in a snow storm and waits for rescuers. After a week the father, James Kim, leaves the car to go find help.

The family is rescued, but poor James after a "superhuman" effort, succumbs to the cold.

Guess the reason this story affects me in particular is:

he's a father of two

he's Korean heritage

around the same age

in his shoes I probably would have done the same thing. News stories below:

Here and here.