James Gayle and Solving Computer Issues

Chelsea had been having problems for almost two years with settings on her laptop. She’d tried any number of avenues looking for help. She finally stripped her hard drive and reinstalled her operating system, only to discover she couldn’t get drivers for her internet, audio, and video. Her wireless had gone out too.

James Gayle fixing Chelsea’s laptop

We wrote to James Gayle at Duck Capital Computers, who came through like a champ. In short order he had fixed Chelsea’s wireless, audio, internet and video drivers, and tweaked a couple of other annoying things.

Not only did he clean that all up and get Chelsea’s computer humming along perfectly, James also copied all our data off two heavy old hard drives to his hard drive. We’d been carrying those hard drives around since Delray Beach in February, trying to figure out a way to get that data off.

We weren’t about to give up easily on it, as they had photos we couldn’t replace, but wow, was it annoying to carry that weight and bulk around!

Chelsea was thrilled to get her laptop functioning perfectly again for the first time since summer of 2010. We were so thrilled that we plugged it in immediately upon arriving home, wanting to check it out thoroughly. The nearest thing at hand was my zip cube holding my computer peripherals, so I grabbed a pen drive.

Remember my lost pen drive, the one with ten years of data on it? We’d been looking for it consistently, both of us, for several weeks by that time. We had taken apart all our bags more than once, checked all pockets in every piece of clothing we owned, and had Pat checking his house again, all to no avail.

I kept repeating positive statements to myself like mantras.

“It’ll show up, I know it will.”
“It’s only lost if I think it’s lost.”
“I feel sure I’ll find it. I just need to relax.”
“It’ll show up, I know it will.”
“It’s only lost if I think it’s lost.”
“I feel sure I’ll find it. I just need to relax.”

Fast forward to sitting in front of Chelsea’s laptop. I plugged in the mysterious pen drive to see what was on it, and much to my amazement I found some of my documents. I first looked at the brain recovery document, as I had hundreds of hours of work on it.

It was there! Not only was it there, it had been changed as recently as December. Almost not able to breathe, I started clicking through other documents at lightning speed. The stop-breathing moment came when I found the most recent blogs I’d written only two weeks earlier. I’d clearly found the missing pen drive.

I did the only mature thing to do – I cried.

I’m sure there are big lessons here more than Back Up Your Data, but right now I’m content to be thrilled that I have it all. And yes, in case you’re wondering, we took the time to clean off another pen drive and did a backup immediately.

Meanwhile we still had to move the seventy-five gigabytes of data from James Gayle’s hard and put the data on our portable external drive. For an absolute eternity one afternoon I sat at Duck Capital Computers, painfully sorting, deleting and copying data from our old hard drives. Tedious is the word that comes to mind. Not only was it tedious, I couldn’t let my attention wander for even a few seconds.

I’d been working by myself for quite while with Sean at his space across the room when Sean asked me something. I immediately muttered “Oh, dammit” to myself, as I’d lost my focus and ended up deleting critical files which I then had to recover.

Hearing my muttering, Sean quickly said, “Oh I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” It was quite funny hearing his apology, but it wasn’t his fault. I was upset with myself, and told him so, but he still didn’t talk to me for quite a while after that.

Some time later, when Chelsea was in the room working with me, Sean called over, “Do y’all need privacy?” We looked up startled. Privacy? Was this a code word for needing their space back? We had been feeling very self-conscious about how long it was taking.

The giveaway was the look on Sean’s face. We suddenly realized he’d been quietly reading our blogs from South Carolina, especially the one about living in a privacy fishbowl. We were really glad for the good laugh we got out of that. We needed it about then.

We’re headed out this afternoon for a bit more time at Duck Capital computers. James is installing more memory on my laptop. Cross your fingers or say a prayer for me that it solves my problems!

Update: Yes, it worked…I got in internet this morning for the first time in ages. The bad news is that it’s still slow. The good, no, amazing, news is that I got on and successfully sent emails. The final answer is that I need a new laptop, as this one has gone as far as it can. It’s eight years old and has been a champ for every one of those eight years, but I am now limited by the hardware capacity.

Meanwhile James Gayle definitely gets our Hero of the Day for his quick and efficient and successful fixes on our computers. We all need someone who can step in and solve issues in a pinch, like James did for us.

Speaking of James, he’s been very active in the ALS group for the last few years. The ALS group sponsors fundraising bike rides and James has signed up to ride in November in Tampa. He’s also headed out to Napa, California as a volunteer for another ALS ride in late September. Not having done any distance rides, he’s asked for our suggestions, so we’ve been helping with the thorny issues of pedals, shoes, cleats, bike seats, and pumps. He looks good to go, now!

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top