oh the frustration...

Monday I sat in class taking notes on my laptop, which is the normal order of business. Some of my friends still kick it old school and hand write their notes, but I can't even read my own hand writing, and I never really learned how to take notes correctly. So for me it is a fast paced exercise in trying to type, as closely as I can, everything the professor says...

That being said, it is pointless for me to carry on about how important my laptop is for me at school, so I'll just carry on...

Well, there I was, typing away feverishly when it happened. I never saw it coming... I did not feel a breeze or wisp of air as death reach over my shoulder and touched my laptop.. I only saw the briefest 'blue screen' of death and then nothing... a deep, black void replaced my MS word and the last few words out of my professors mouth never made it passed the no longer blinking cursor of life...

I knew what it was as soon as it happened. I knew what was wrong and I knew I was in trouble.
But I didn't think it was as bad as it turned out to be.

I through my hands in the air and had to seriously dig deep to resist the immediate urge to chuck my laptop the length of the auditorium and scream out in primal rage... instead I packed up my gear and left with 20 minutes left in class... without my laptop it was pointless for me to be there.

I went directly to circuit city, which turned out to be a wasted trip, for although my laptop is still under warranty (one of the only times I have ever done that by the way - bought the extended warranty) - but they no longer send out the machines from circuit city. So I went back out to my car and called the customer service line. The lady was nice enough and she had me do a few trouble shooting operations, which were absolutely useless, because when your mother board fries (which was what happened to me) you computer doesn't do anything. It turns on, the cd-rom spins, and then nothing... not even crickets. But I humored her to expedite the process, and I received a box the next day to ship my ailing machine out to the PC doctor to get new guts. When I sent it out, I filled out the paperwork and asked specifically that they not change any of the data on my hard drive, if they could any way help it. When a mother board dies, it should not effect any of the rest of the equipment inside - there was no reason for me to fear for my data - but I asked anyway, pleaded really... and then I waited.

Today that wait ended.. I got my laptop back and quickly went to plug it in a start it up to see how much better it was running.. and it is quite remarkable how much faster it is running and how much smoother it loads... and how different my OS looks... and how much space there is on my cleanly wiped hard drive...

I could be upset about the 7 gigs of music I had stashed on my drive... I could be upset about gigabytes of programs i had installed and how tuned i had my registry and how happy i was with the overall setup of the system... but I'm not... not really...

I'm only upset about the 2-300K I had in MS word documents that marked the progress of my semester.. I feel like the last 2 or 3 weeks of my work have been erased, and that is pretty frustrating. I am generally good at backing things up like that - I copy my school work to my desktop at home for just such emergencies, and I do it just about every week.. but for some reason, ordained before the foundation of the world, I hadn't backed up for a couple weeks...
My own fault... but it doesn't make it any less of a HUGE pain in the butt... and I'll probably spend most of my break trying to get it back to normal working order... sheesh, how annoying.

i know.. i'm just whining right now... i'll be over it tomorrow.