Today Va called me. She couldn’t access the library card catalog server I had set up a while back. I had her try some things over the phone, but it was quickly evident that this was going to require some hands-on attention.

When I got home, I plugged a monitor into it, and pressed a couple of keys on its keyboard to get the screen to light up. But it was to no effect. The keyboard had been disconnected and plugged into Jonathan’s old (and powered-off) computer. Sometimes they won’t boot without a keyboard. So I plugged it into the library server (with the power on). It still wouldn’t respond. I eventually cycled power. When it came up, I made some changes so that when there is a power failure, it will turn itself back on again.

Then it wouldn’t boot. Uh oh! I removed the cover and blew gobs of dust out of it. Then tried again. Eventually it did boot, and as soon as I could log into it, I backed up the card catalog database and copied it to my laptop. Now if it continues to be dodgy, at least I have all the data Va has painstakingly entered into it over the past several weeks. She would not be happy if she had to do that all over again, and I would not blamer her.

I guess I need to set something up to make backups on a routine basis. Also, I might want to look into using some other computer for this purpose. This one is scaring me!