not so happy holidays

I will be laying low over the next week or so, as the hard drive went south on the pc, and I am trying to recover the data. It looks to be a slow process (should take a few days for the external hd), but so far the results are looking promising. A word to the wise - if you need something you have on your pc, back it up. I should have known better, since I've been telling people to back up for years, but in this case, even the external hd has been affected, so there you go. Although I will live even if everything is gone, it would be nice to keep the 6 or 7 years of kid photos.