fathead

my hard drive decided it just had enough and crapped out on me last week. interestingly enough i didn't back up any of my data since the hard drive was only a one year old. i lost, in a word, everything. to say i was somewhat upset is kind of like saying mimes are somewhat annoying.

after several hard reboots, loud exclamations of "what the fuck", even louder shouted "what the fuck's", i finally gave up.

i made a couple phone calls to figure out, what if any, recourse i had.

me: i think it's my read-write heads, i think they are screwed. it's making funny noises.
computer store person: yeah i think you are right, if it makes funny noises it's probably mechanical
me: so can you fix it?
computer store person: no, and nobody in town can fix it either, a hard drive needs to be opened up in a "clean room". you need to ship it out to toshiba, or western digital or some other large OEM. we can't even order the parts. the distance between your read-write heads and the platter of your hard drive is like seven times less than the thickness of a human hair. if a smoke particle gets in there your screwed.
me: oh...so how much would it be to fix it? a couple hundred bucks?
computer store person: well.....it starts there but it can easily run into the thousands.

brilliant.

this is the second western digital hard drive that has crapped out on me in the past year. both drives were brand new and both crapped out. the ironic thing is i have an old samsung hard drive that is at least seven years old that i have to hit with the back of a screwdriver to make the platter spin. but still, in seven years that drive has never crapped out on me and i've never lost any data on the drive. to make a long, whiny story much shorter, i'll bottom line it.

i bought a new hard drive.

my new hard drive is a samsung.

//other news on the technology front

this week, the electric company had to swap out all the old electric meters and reinstall new ones. this was supposed to result in a loss of power for eight hours. but, surprise, surprise, it lasted almost thirty six hours.

a list of things that don't require power in my apartment:
- floor
- bed
- pillows
- shoes

a list of things i don't like to do:
- take showers in the dark
- take cold showers in the dark because my hot water heater doesn't have electricity to heat the water.
- read books with a flashlight
- smash various body parts into furniture that is invisible because it's too dark to see

and finally a list of things i like to do:
- call and yell at the power company
- call and yell at my landlord
- silently curse ben franklin for daylight savings time. (i'm pretty sure that even without daylight savings time it would have been dark in my apartment nonetheless. but... i was upset and angry and ben franklin is an easy target, particularly since he can't refute me, being that he is dead)

On page 16 of the Times yesterday wedged underneath a light human interest piece and above a whimsical photo of two large boulders that almost rolled over a person's house in Scandinavia was a short article titled Names of the Dead.

552 Americans have died in Iraq since the beginning of hostilities. It seems that somebody should try to remember as it appears our President clearly doesn't.

We arrive at the restaurant and before we sit down I go off to the washroom to wash my hands. My friend just got a new phone so he brought in his manual so he can figure out how to use the phone. After I finish washing my hands, I'm walking back to the table and I see my friend with his manual open and he is pointing the top of his phone down at the table and I can tell he is depressing one of the keys. He stops, holds the phone right side up, looks at it, then points the phone down again and starts to depress a key again. He goes through this contortion one more time before I get to the table.

I sit down, look at him and say "What are you trying to do?"

He looks back and says in his Texas drawl, "Well, it says here that I have to hold the phone down for three seconds to turn off the phone. That's kinda weird in't it?"

I look back and say, "I think they mean you just have to hold the off button down for three seconds...."

-- i've been a non-smoker for almost a year now. or maybe 8 months, i'm not sure. in any event, (numbers = bad) i no longer smoke. now my job is to sneer with haughty disdain at smokers when i see them in public places. (ha ha, i am laughing at their weakness.)

-- reading anything about the upcoming presidential race makes me feel like i'm being suffocated with marshmallows.*

*according to google.com at least 23,000 idiots think the word marshmallows is spelled "marshmellows." i suppose i should give them a break since i used to spell definite, "definate" with fairly regular consistency (read, all the time.)