Near-death experience.

The Colonel almost had a meltdown last Friday when his hard drive, like the parrot in the famous Monty Python skit, had ceased to show signs of life.

Our last backup had been in late December so any loss of data was not going to be catastrophic. Any data loss would have been highly irritating, however. All the more so since the concept of backing up data is well known to the Colonel and here he was caught flat footed, even having ignored slightly ominous change in sounds coming from drive.

Our computer experts were able to revive the drive long enough to make a mirror image copy on another drive. Happily we are back to rejoin the fray to afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. All as part of a giant ego trip of some kind.

Verb. sap..