Reconnected (well, sort of...)

After reporting last week that I have been liberated of my new laptop, I've managed to clean the wicks and get some paraffin into the old Dell. Unfortunately I'm running with it sort of hooked up to an iron lung - the onboard display is completely croaked, but I've managed to borrow a spare external monitor from the office and hook that up, so I have what you would probably call a "desk-lap".

Thankfully I managed to get my cards stopped before the thief managed to withdraw my vast stipend (one ATM withdrawal would have sorted THAT out!), and my bank has promised to get a new card to me during the course of next week (would have been same day, except that Investec is in Joburg and I'm in Uitenhage). In the meantime, generous offers of invites for lunches and suppers from members of my congregation have been keeping the tummy full. (This is where ministry truly happens, thank you SO much, folks. Your love and support is overwhelming!)

The downside is of course the amount of information I've lost. Yes, I KNOW one is supposed to keep backups. And the irony (I swear this IS the the truth, God being my witness) is that I had recently acquired an external DVD writer, and was going to spend my day off this Monday with a fresh new sleeve of blank DVDs, doing what every good computer user should! (The other reason for replacing the Dell was that it was not only the screen that died, but the on-board DVD writer as well, hence no backups from that source...)

My biggest concern is that I have three TEEC assignments due on 4 October. One of them has already been posted off, but the other two were each about 50-70% complete, but now that the machine is gone, I need to start from scratch. Please pray that the "powers that be" would be willing to grant me an extension to get them in. They normally don't allow for this, but I'm hoping that they'll cut me a little slack here, seeing as I have a perfect academic record over the past three years.

It's no good crying or throwing my toys out the cot - these things happen, I guess. The laptop is insured. The cards have been stopped, and are in the process of being replaced. It's just the information loss that is proving to be a MAJOR disruption at the moment.