Monday, January 21, 2008

This is NOT Happening!

Today started off beautifully. Got to sleep in (a crazy luxury when my normal day starts at 5 am), wrote my morning pages, got a little breakfast, it's gorgeous outside, kids are getting along. Another Pleasant Valley Monday.

And then it went to hell.

Computer starts acting up. It's been twitchy for a couple of days--hanging browser, won't force quit, off and on, etc. I think maybe it's a network thing. Patrick, my Mac guru, says to unplug it and bring it in. So I do. He can't get it to boot right, either. Then we discover, to his chagrin and my horror, that MY HARD DRIVE IS IN MECHANICAL FAILURE. Nice safe data, no way to access it. At all. No pictures, no files, no software, no website I built from scratch but haven't uploaded, nada.

Of course, there are very nice people with safe rooms who will carefully remove the disc, put it in a working case, and pull up my data for a fee, which is roughly the cost of A WHOLE FREAKIN' NEW COMPUTER!!!

My checkbook and I are fighting right now as it is. I am so not in the mood to have to buy a new system. Or even an old system.

This is exactly what happened with the car. It was acting up, we put a chunk of repair money into it, and then it died forever. Had to buy a new car. Looks like Passat infection spread to my iMac. It was acting up, I put a chunk of money into it, and now it's dead forever.

So now I have three options to consider:
  1. Put a different hard drive into my iMac shell, roughly $100 or so.
  2. Buy a slightly newer used Mac for $400.
  3. Say "what the hell, it's only debt" and buy a new iMac altogether, about $1200.
Thank God I had the presence of mind to copy all the novel files onto an external hard drive so I could save them to my new(ish) laptop. Too bad I lacked the presence of mind to copy every freakin' thing else! So now I have trapped data on a hard drive that's fine, but will require a very expensive key to get back out. The universe is currently laughing its ass of at me right now.

This was not in my plan for today.

5 comments:

Terry Odell said...

I feel your pain (but I thought that stuff didn't happen to Macs). I lost my hard drive, and the local repair folks said 'no can do -- it's gone.'
DH sent it to a former colleague who used to work in information systems of some sort for the military and he opened it in a heartbeat, saying the local nerds had no clue what they were talking about; it was a matter of slaving the drive.

Seems to me things have reversed over time--we're now slaves to the machines we only think we own.

mimi said...

Alas, mechanical failure can happen to anything, even Macs. It wasn't a virus, just a machine part that decided to quit working (rat bastard!). *sigh* I'll be carping to my tech guys at school tomorrow to see if they have any ideas. Cross your fingers and pray!

Dara said...

I'm not so sure it's the universe laughing - might be those suits in office towers somewhere who live by words like, "Planned Obsolescence." They all suck.

Macy O'Neal said...

You are aware that it's a full moon aren't you? I can always tell. The crazy people get crazier. Things that would never break, break. In my job, I see some crazy people daily, but on full moon weeks -- eegads.

Nothing is safe. Not even Macs.

Katie Reus said...

Wish I had a more eloquent phrase, but that just blows. I'm sending hugs and good thoughts your way!

 

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