The Sad Computer Tale

Once a long time ago in a land far, far away a husband and a wife wanted a brand new shiny Mac, oh so badly.  They found one on sale (What?  Mac's never go on sale!)  But their dear friend wanted one just like theirs at the very same time and the store only had one, so they agreed to take the floor model (with another reduction in cost.)  Well the husband and wife were feeling so happy about their purchase and they loved their Mac!  Until one day, 2 years later, that very Mac decided to freeze up and stop working without any warning!  The husband and wife had not been in their new house, far across the ocean, for more than 6 months and they hadn't gotten everything just the way they wanted yet.  They took their baby Mac in to an Apple doctor, hoping agains hope that it could be fixed.  It was only 2 years old, after all!  Alas nothing could save the Mac's hard drive and it had to be replaced.  The Mac is better now, but it's memory is gone.  Six months of precious pictures gone!  All the music- gone!  All the documents- gone!  The husband and the wife were able to restore the music with much patience.  They could do without the documents, but the pictures were lost.  You see, one of the things they had neglected to do, after their move, was set up the external hard drive.  There was one hope- a data retrieval specialist.  Alas, the data retrieval was over 800 euros- too high a price to pay for 6 months of non-backed up pictures!  There may be yet another hope.  Some of the pictures are actually stored on their blog and FB pages and they have friends that were with them as they saw London and Belgium and the Black Forest and Rothenburg, Hohenzollern castle and Munich.  They had family with them at the funeral of the husband's Father and during their two week stay.  If the friends and family all sent copies of their photos to the husband and wife it would bring them some joy.

The moral of this story is:  always print and back up your pictures!