Louis' Ramblings

Todays lesson: Never do something nice if it leaves you financially liable

So today I went to switch around some drives on a friend's laptop. I literally do this sort of thing dozens, if not hundreds of times a year. Today the computer stopped seeing any drive off its primary interface. I still have all of the data, but it is a PITA. I remember the first time I broke something on a computer. I was 14 years old, and swapping cards in an Apple //e. The circuit breaker was turned off, but the machines power switch was int he on position. Someone hit the breaker when I was in the other room, and I did not notice when I came back (it was a lab, so it was noisey). When I inserted a card, and sparks flew. As the person who ran the lab told me "You do this everyday, eventually something will go wrong, its not a big deal." Anyway, I feel morally obligated to do something about the broken laptop.

I had been going to give my mother my old laptop, since her laptop died. Instead I am going to give my old laptop to my friend, take my friend's dead laptop and sell it for scrap (Its screen still works and it mostly works, so I figure I can probably get $350-$450 selling it as parts), and buying my mom a new laptop (I estimate it will cost around $850). So I end up spending around $400 to significantly bump up the machine my mom was buying. I estimate that given the way machines are being traded around I will take a net loss of $150-$250 on the whole deal, but it is forcing me to spend a bit of money to make mother have a nicer machine sooner than I would have expected. In the end at least I get to give my mother a better computer, which is nice, and its not the end of the world, but it is an important lesson. I am not doing any more computer maintenance for anyone who is not a family member. My friends can pay someone, because then that person is liable.