Tudhalyas (Andrea) and TxonTirea, take a bow...

[Na'vi taw'ite]

Ma smukan si smuke,

I'm tapping away on my laptop right now, and the fact that I can do so again is the rationale behind the title of my post.

Many, MANY posts have pointed out how we are like true friends and family here on ToS, how we're closer to each other than to those in our real lives, and I'm about to submit yet another case to support the reasons I'm closer to my little ToS/Skype family than I thought I ever could be.

My laptop up and died about a week ago. I was Skyping with the aforementioned "family", when the bloody thing started hanging. Multiple reboots later, and I could get past my log-in screen, but that was it.

My laptop had already had one issue with its anti-virus program, and Andrea and Txon helped me resolve that issue via a conference call on the Skype app on my iPhone. But THIS issue...this was a toughie.

Andrea spent most of that Monday afternoon (assisted by Txon) guiding me through various procedures to try and get my laptop behaving again. (Mind you, since I'm not as well-versed in computer technology as either of them, this is tantamount to a brilliant surgical team trying to perform remote surgery with a glitchy robot.) A system restore seemed to do the job, but an hour later, I was back to square one. Due to time differences, my "personal tech support center" was unavailable. I sent a text message to three of my more computer-literate real-life friends and waited for a response. (One responded with, "Sorry, I've been busy lately"...and nothing more.)

The following day, Andrea guided me (again in a CC on Skype) with using my ancient desktop to install Ubuntu on a flash drive in order to be able to save my priceless files and allow me to boot my computer through it. (Mind you, I was waiting for any other responses to my predicament from my real-life friends.) I purchased a 500GB external HD and dumped my data en masse onto it.

Yesterday finally saw me truly resurrect my laptop, still guided by my two tech-support whizzes: I wiped the hard drive completely and restored it to its factory settings.

Through this entire ordeal, the irony was biting: my real-life friends (one who lives a bare three miles from me) didn't help at all, while two very real friends who live THOUSANDS OF MILES away helped me resolve my problem.

That said, Andrea and Txon, take a bow. You truly were and still are godsends to me, and I am beholden to you both for everything you've done. I love you both...