Last summer the hard disk on my MacBook died.  At that time it was just over a year old.  And now to celebrate its second birthday the hard disk has died again.

Although it makes me sound like a stereotypical geek I found it really hard to do anything without a computer.  The only task I seem to do without one is housework.  And that’s not completely true as I like to play music when I clean, which was stored on my computer.

It took forever to do my Japanese homework without an online dictionary.  I couldn’t work on my sewing or knitting as the patterns are online.  I couldn’t make an appointment at the beauticians because I do this online.  I was restricted in what I could cook for dinner as I didn’t have access to my recipes.  All these things were annoying but the feeling of being trapped in Tokyo with no way to communicate with anyone outside this city was horrible.

The two days offline made me realise that I need a second computer.  I really like my MacBook but having two of these doesn’t seem overly sensible.  Back in April Marty tried to convince me to buy a netbook. I could see why it would be useful to have one but my desire to own one wasn’t as strong as my reluctance to try something new.  After two days of being offline I rang Marty at work and asked him to please buy me a netbook on his way home.

I’m not sure what I think of my new HP Mini but it’s so much better than being computerless.