You know the kid is home from college when . . .

the Old Man is persuaded to refrain from dropping any more money at CompUSA until it can be determined whether needed parts can be scavenged from the old computer. So there sat my two favorite gents, the Punster and the Son-ster, on the livingroom floor (what, you were thinking there was maybe someplace else?) with two CPU towers cracked open, cannabalizing the old computer for parts for the, well, not-quite-as-old computer. I told our son, half jokingly, that maybe, when the newer computer gives out (in about three days), I'll get another desktop instead of a laptop, just to give him the privilege of cranking open the CPU tower and playing around inside, occasionally. (He assures me that, given how tightly everything is packed into a laptop, it's not possible for amateurs to do their own repairs or upgrades, and besides, one can't open up the casing of a laptop computer without invalidating the warranty.)

The good news is that my current computer is now the proud possessor of two internal hard drives. The medium news is that the scavenged CD-RW drive does play commercial CDs, but not "homemades." (We haven't tried burning a new CD on it yet--stay tuned.) The bad news is that, in the process of swapping CDs for testing, I managed to do such a thorough job of misplacing one of the CDs that we still haven't found it, two days later.

And then, of course, there's the obvious. My current computer, two hard drives notwithstanding, is on its last legs, as I was saying. (Halevai [it should only happen], it should live and be well until we can afford a replacement, which will be at least another year, since the Punster needs to replace his own computer first, for business reasons.) So, since our son had previously absconded with our external hard drive, we bought a new one and backed up the entire (I hope) contents of my computer thereon. Did I mention that our new external hard drive has a higher capacity than our old one? Did I mention that our son brought the old external hard drive home with him? Just how many days do you think we'll be in possession of the new external hard drive? Hint: Our kid's in mid-academic-quarter, and must return to school next week. It's a good thing that I never got around to throwing out the box for the new external hard drive. :)

Friday morning, December 29 update: The kid tells us that we bought a piece of junk--backing up his hard drive, which should have taken only about 1 1/2-2 hours, took him most of the day yesterday. Apparently, he had to move most of his files one by one to keep the drive from stalling. !#$%^&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!