d i n a n e . n e t 

I had a really good idea for a blog post last night as I was getting ready for bed. It was going to be awesome. I felt like I had at least a good four or five paragraphs worth of stuff you might actually want to read.

But I now cannot remember a lick of it. Not even the title, which I remember being especially exquisite.

So, instead, you get to hear more about how hardware hates me.

When I got home last night, Mike was upstairs fussing with my computer and the RAID that we have for backing up our shit. See, the night before, my personal laptop’s hard drive decided that it too would like to shit the bed. Luckily, it is dying a bit slower than my work computer’s hard drive did. The work computer was a complete loss as soon as I noted that it was broken. My laptop decided that it was okay to boot up after it’s initial seemingly complete death. Sure, it made a sad mac noise. But it still came up.

So we tried to back up my shit. We tethered it to the RAID, set stuff up, and walked away. Apparently, Mike found it to have failed to copy the next morning. So he started it again, and yesterday afternoon it had failed again. Leaving him with only one option. He hacked the OS.

Yeah, that’s not the option I would have thought of. And it’s probably good that I didn’t see him doing this. It would have made me anxious. He told the OS to keep trying to read bad sectors. Like 1000 times or something stupid like that, before calling it a real read error.

It worked.

But I do smell a trip to an Apple store in my future. One with a visit with a Genius. Hopefully he tells me it’s easy to pop in a new hard drive, or at least that he can do it for a fee that doesn’t make me nauseous.

Ultimately, though, my computer is pretty ancient. I mean, I want to believe he’s going to make it another bajillionty years, but when it comes down to it, 4 is old for a laptop. Just… I don’t really have spare money floating around for a new laptop. And I don’t really want to get a desktop. I like being able to lounge on the couch when I’m working from home.

At least I know what would happen to the brand new power cable I just bought my laptop less than a month ago. I was whining about how I’d hate to spend money on my computer only to have to replace it when Mike stated, as a matter of fact, “If you get a new computer, I’m stealing your power cable. We can sell the broken computer with my broken power cable on eBay.”

Nice to know someone’s already in line to steal and sell parts…

I wonder if I can get the kind of price I got last time I sold an old and broken computer on eBay.

eBay is my Friend
How neat is it that you can sell broken used crap on eBay and get real money from people? I wrote a little poem to express how lovely eBay is.

eBay is my Friend

I had a nice computer,
I liked it quite a bit.
I dropped it on the floor,
because I’m a dimwit.

It was cracked and broken,
but as I wiped it down,
I seemed like it would function
still, so I – I didn’t frown.

Then after months of happy use,
the screen went two-thirds dead.
It’s usefulness was shattered
and I hung my sad sad head.

After I got over it,
I wanted to see it gone.
Now some guy in California
wants my computer for his own.

eBay is my friend now,
’cause they let me peddle
my junky broken ‘puter
to the highest bidder.

Pretty crappy poem, huh? I’m awful proud of it. And I’m awful glad for eBay!

– My LiveJournal, 03/03/2004

This is less of a blog post and more of an order. You should back up your shit. Now. I mean it. Get out a CD-R, or connect to your company’s back up server, or make a shelveset or a personal branch, or do whatever it is you do to make sure you don’t lose things. Back up your shit. I mean everything. Even the stuff you just kinda keep on your desktop. Everything. Even the VMs you think you don’t care about that much. Everything. Even the work you’re doing right now that isn’t finished. In fact, especially that. Just think about how much it would suck to have to start over.

Back up your shit.

Or you’ll end up like me.