Crash and Burn

The blog has been semi-dark for the past week.  Well, I had a major crash and burn.  My computer hard drive seemed to be malfunctioning and it's only four months old.  After a couple of phone calls and transfers, I got the correct people at HP support.  Their thought was that there might be something wrong with the operating system (Windows 8.1).  They probably thought that there was also something wrong with the operator of the system (me), and they might not be far off of the mark.  At any rate, it required that I wipe the hard drive clean and reinstall the operating system.  I have never done that before and my confidence level was not very high.  Still, the tech support walked me through the process.  It took nearly an hour but it seems to have fixed the problem.  On the down side, I now have to re-install all of my programs, put my important document files back where they belong, and try to figure out how to reset my preferences.  Needless to say, it has been a journey.  Hopefully, I'll have it all back to almost normal by next week.  Technology is a wonderful thing...until it decides to not be a wonderful thing, then...it's your worst nightmare.