So I get home last night and my cable card isn’t decoding the signal for the TV. The cable box was working fine. Thank the stars as poor Tivo might have had a fit otherwise. The card still isn’t fixed today. Comcrack is supposed to be out later to repair it (read here: snoop to see if I’m hacking the signal). I found out quite a few folks here lost their signal due to an “uprade” in software. Now, you know I’d rather walk on lips than talk about someone but, I heard a dirty rumor they are actually using it to see how many folks are trying to pirate cable thru hacked cards. Of course, there is never any truth to big business spying on consumers so I don’t believe a word of it. Tsk, tsk.
The real drama was yet to come. I get up this morning I groggily make my way to the sofa to fire up the laptop1 only to be shocked completely awake by a clicking noise and a dark laptop screen. Here is a sample of what went thru my mind…
Oh no! Quick, what is the number to 911? Wait, calm down, deep breaths…just reboot.
Eeeeeek! error again. What’s this? Can’t find hard drive. Oh no! Damn.
Ok Moby, keep it together, you’ll get thru this. Try reseating the drive. Maybe, it is just loose.
*Tearing thru the kitchen looking for THE screwdriver. The only one that fits the laptop screws.*
10 minutes later….
Ok, drive reseated…slowly now…don’t rush it.
Reboot.
Noooooooooooo! Still no drive detected. Damn you Jerry Falwell!2 It is all your fault! How dare you strike at me from the grave. You’ll get yours, just wait.
After which, I promptly fainted.
***
Ok, not really. I did get rather annoyed at the damn thing. Dell answered after only 15 minutes on hold. They are 2-day’ing me a new drive. I should have it by Wednesday at the latest.
Thankfully, I still have the old laptop. Granted, its a bit beat up. Double thanks to the tech gods, I hadn’t cannibalized it yet either. I can’t imagine what would have happened if *gasp* I had to go with out internet access. I really might have fainted. It is simply too scary a thought to imagine.
2 I did fleetingly wonder if it was my karma for being happy about his demise. If so, I’m willing to endure it. I’m still glad the fucker is dead.
Moby! What a scary story! I think I peed a little! I hope you had everything backed up onto an external drive somewhere. Otherwise what a head ache that would be (ohhy!). Good thing you had an “extra” laptop or “emergency” computer for times like these.
Funny, mine had a hard time starting yesterday (my COMPUTER!)……had to take the battery pack in and out about ten times, trying and trying, an error, off again, try again, it finally started. Weird.
Being “in the biz” as it were, and using Dell equipment exclusively at my shop, I can say that Dell hard drives (i.e. Maxtor) are notoriously flaky. The newer systems ship with Western Digital or Seagate, but a lot of the earlier models came with Maxtors. I have a big pile of dead Maxtors in my store room…
Yikes! I hate to read about computer problems. I feel like it will jinx me and I’ll “catch” the same problem. I know, I’m crazy….*shrugs*.
Atomic ~ I keep most of my data on the terabyte drive at home however, there are some things I need to try and get off of the disc. I’ll probably go by the computer store tomorrow to see if they can do a memory dump onto a SD card or USB drive. I’m sure the disc is accessible as it failed vs being physically broken.