A Hero Will Save Us

A few weeks ago I saved Kelly by giving her a floppy disk so she could turn in her Note. She was so happy she even commented on her blog. Thank you Kelly :-)

Yesterday the fabulous Kelly P. asked me to try to save her laptop. I dashed over during our break in Admin Law, yet sadly I couldn't revive the laptop. Microsoft has made Windows XP so complicated that you can't easily get it into a SAFE MODE. It appears the hard drive was actually dying so nothing I could do from a software point of view could be resolved by me regardless. I felt miserable. Normally I can fix most people's PC problems or at least jury-rig a decent bypass. Besides, the fabulous Kelly P. trusted me to fix it and I failed. I HATE failing.

Today, our crusader Deb had a disk that refused to eject from her laptop's floppy drive. It only took me 5 seconds to figure out that the metal sliding tab on the disk was loose and engaging with something in the floppy drive's mechanism. The disk could have been ripped out, but that would have left the metal tab within the drive itself rendering it useless. Luckily for Deb I was in my civilian clothes where I always have my Leatherman multi-purpose tool with me. In uniform I don't wear the Leatherman because security at the City-County building would yank it from me. Deb couldn't watch as I used the 3 inch blade to slowly work into the drive and attempt to either loosen the stuck tab or hopefully wedge the tab against the disk and slide it out. It took 10 minutes of work after Evidence, and I almost gave up twice, but I did it!

Brian, you're a hero!

Thank you ma'am. It's all part of the service.