Most Polytropizing gets done on the trusty laptop, but it’s the desktop PC that’s a labor of love: a cobbled-together mishmash of parts acquired hither and yon, from 1 to 5 years old. (She’s got it where it counts, Kessel Run, you get the idea.) There was a brief scare today, as the second hard drive on the desktop crashed completely, after which point the main one decided to become invisible to the BIOS for a while. I yanked both hard drives out, in order to . . . I dunno, look at them sternly or something. The diciest moment was when I got the main drive working again while it was balanced precariously on the corner of the open computer case, and quickly backed up all the data that I hadn’t already to the laptop via wireless.

I originally suspected that both drives had gone kerfluffle and were making the Harsh Clicking Sound of Death. But now I’m not so sure. The second drive is definitely dead, but it was getting on in years to begin with, so I’m not surprised. I could have sworn I heard clicking from the newer drive as well, but now it’s behaving very nicely. I put everything back together and the whole computer is purring — even the front case fan has stopped being quite so noisy. It’s quiet: _too_ quiet. Perhaps the rest of the internal components were sufficiently frightened by the lightning extraction of the offending hard drive that they’ll be cowed into obedience for a while. Then again, they might be plotting _revolution_. I’ll be on my guard.