Praying for a Computer Tech

So, here’s the scenario: You’re a free-lance writer and editor. You own a laptop and a desktop, and though you do lots of work on your laptop, your desktop is the brains of your outfit. All your writing is housed and archived there. When the laptop crashes, it’s inconvenient but not earth shattering. Though the budget is skinny, you manage to scrape enough money together to replace it. However, when the desktop goes gunny sack the next week, things look very, very black. Jet black. Inky. Is there another way to intensify the word? Super black, because, since you’re always working right up against a deadline, you never have time to install a really good, fail-safe, automatic, back-up system. It’s always at the head of your Good Intentions List, because you know how important it is. But you never get around to it.

That is what happened to a friend of mine a couple weeks ago, just before I visited her. Of course, the project we were working on together was in the desktop, so we waited for her computer guru, a local student, to come back with the computer in one hand and the retrieved data in the other. While we waited, my friend had to listen to people telling her the zillion different ways one can back up one’s work. All great information, but a little too late. And besides, she already knew. She was just overstretched and underfunded, someone so in love with words that she’d bypass better paying jobs to be able to write.

The student guru arrived right on time, as promised, but only one hand was carrying anything: the expired computer. He was a nice fellow and very apologetic, but the data was irretrievable, he said. As I contemplated hanging the front door with black crepe, my friend got on the phone. Two years ago, she had done some free-lance writing for a company whose business was data retrieval. She couldn’t remember any names for sure, but she began sleuthing to find them. Along the way, she got the names of a couple companies who would try. Their price was close to four figures, they didn’t guarantee anything, and she had to send the machine away.

Finally, Saturday afternoon, she found the name she was looking for. She called him on the phone and he said he lived not too far from her. He’d pick up the machine. “This is what I do,” he said. He arrived about half hour later.

My friend wasn’t expecting much, but she gave him the computer, and we sincerely prayed for blessings on his head and hands. I flew home, and she emailed me Monday afternoon that he had just delivered the computer to her door. Not only had he retrieved the data, but he had installed a new hard drive bigger than the last one, and she was in business again. All that service was at a very fair, competitive rate.

This fellow’s name is Russ Brown, and his company is RBC Solutions, located in the Phoenix area. He’s a good man and a great computer tech. And, he was an answer to a prayer. Service doesn’t get much better than that.

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