The Wonderful World of Troubleshooting

So after being without a working computer... or at least working Mac (which sometimes is the same thing) for 8 weeks I received the new computer. It was delivered to the superintendent since I missed the buzzer. It's really too bad that you can't arrange for a delivery in the afternoon. So I get everything installed and then restarted my computer. Low and behold the USB devices weren't being recognized. I think my heart stopped at that point. So I erase the drive and start troubleshooting it. Troubleshooting really does require a lot of patience and an analytical mind. But my time at work came in handy. It was frustrating because it took so long. I think I spent 9 hours troubleshooting and erased the external drive and the internal drive a few more times in the process. In the end it was an issue with the external drive I was using. Just a weird issue... Fortunately I was using an enclosure so I could swap out the external drive and now it all seems to be working fine. I have come to the conclusion that I hate serial ATA drives. I have had nothing but problems with them. In the PC I have had to replace 2 serial drives and this is now the third drive to have issues. But I am happy to have a working computer again. I've missed my MacBook Pro. Now I just have to talk sweetly to it so that it works properly.