No terminator I am but still, back, after a two-month hiatus.

Interesting phase this was where in my computer caught fire and the cell phone died. I chose to delay replacing both and was able to treat myself to an 'unplugged' life for a change. And in the process I realised that the totally wired life that we live today is so much self-imposed that we never really get round to seeing beyond it.

To begin, I was forced to pick up the phone and talk to friends, instead of sending an SMS. More, I was actually able to meet some of them to remember what they really looked like.

I didnt have to worry about my phone's battery dying every other day, which to me till now had really been the proverbial Roti, Kapra, Makaan and the Charger.

I actually found time to go through my bookshelf and settle down in my beanbag for a much deserved reading of Freakonomics.

And frankly, there aren't any flowers around my place or else I would have stopped to smell them too.

But more importantly, I learnt that:

1) Computer Hard Disks can overheat and conk off totally at their own sweet will.

2) Seagate hard disks are trash, at least the ones they sell in India. They overheat (meaning touch temperatures of 50 degrees or above) at the slightest, continuous use for data transfer.

3) Western Digital is the best HDD in the market currently, way above Seagate, Samsung & Hitachi. I'll spare you the technical details but take my word for this. I know enough about IT hardware to comment on this.

4) The rather innocuous looking SMPS (power supply) that converts 230V down to usable voltages (3.3V, 5V & 12V) inside the computer and was supplied with your desktop when you got it assembled, is probably of very low quality (since it costs between Rs. 250 - 450) and can start a fire any moment. The ones to buy are actually worth Rs. 3,500 or more. But your friendly neighbourhood computerwala isnt going to tell you that basically because he doesnt know jack**** about the importance of having a good quality SMPS in a PC.

5) You never remember to backup your data.

So I lost about 450 GB data within 10 seconds. But somehow the fire couldnt do much damage so all of it was recovered within a week.

That also explains why I wasnt blogging. But now that I am back, bombs away...

(Might come back with a post on best methods for maintaining a backup)