SQUARE ONE

My hard drive failed today. I lost everything. EVERYTHING. It started when my screen froze after trying to connect from Drudge Report to weatherunderground.com. When I restarted I could not get past a blue-screen error message. I spent my lunch hour talking to Dell Support, diagnosing the problem -- "You're hard drive has failed, sir" -- and writing down what I needed to do next.

Long story short, all my music, all my budget files, all my programs, links/favorites/lists/pwds, etc, are GONE. GONE. HISTORY. ERASED. LIKE THEY NEVER EXISTED. I'm getting a new hard drive installed sometime on Monday. And because Dell no longer manufactures Dimension 4700s, I have to download a bunch of other critical setup files from the internet, burn them to a cd, and then load them on my comp.

In the meantime, I will be suffering from Internet withdrawal. You see, like a lot of people my age, I'm a child of the Internet. And now I've lost my mommy.

What I'm most concerned about is my iPod data. Obviously, the device itself holds all my music right now, but what will happen when I reinstall the software? What about all my purchased music? It's funny, just this past week I got a warning from Apple recommending that I back up all my music on disc in case my hard drive fails. I completely ignored it. Now I feel like I've been careless.

I'd like to thank the Dell Technical Support Team for hiring Indians who can't utter one sentence without needing to repeat it because I can't understand a goddamn word they are saying.

Needless to say, I will be out of commission for a while, online-wise, for at least the next 5 days. So here's a forecast:

Saturday: Go Irish. Maybe a movie too.
Sunday: TBD
Monday: Work, and then Laguna Night w/ Lori.
Tuesday: Work, and then pack for Austin
Wednesday-Monday: Austin Awesomeness