It started with a brilliant plan - as all catastrophes do. It ended with me hauling a hard drive to the Apple store in hopes of recovering months of work, not to mention thousands of dollars worth of music, from the happy place where the hard drive had decided to hide my valuables from sight.
Out of sight, out of mind?
I. Don't. Think. So.
"Well, you've pretty much got two options" said the guy at the Genius Bar, where Apple pays people with Ryan Seacrest hairdos to tell you whether you're stupid or fucked.
CUSTOMER: "I can't get sound out of my iPod."
SEACREST: "Are the headphones plugged in?"
CONCLUSION: Stupid!
CUSTOMER: "Somebody dumped a vat of acid onto my laptop"
SEACREST: "uhhmmm..."
CONCLUSION: Fucked!
ME: "My files got dropped in the trash, but not yet deleted. Click the trash and the operating system freezes."
SEACREST: "It's not frozen. It's just chewing through thousands of fi... no... wait. It's frozen. Wow! I've never seen THAT before!"
CONCLUSION: Jackpot!!!! I was both stupid and fucked. I could go into the details as to how this happened, but the end result is what it is...
SEACREST: "You've pretty much got two options..."
ME: "Here's my credit card..."
SEACREST: "Go get this, pay for it over there..."
"There's no better time for a computer emergency than the week before Christmas" I thought while looking at the line he was pointing to.
"Doing a little holiday shopping?" asked the twelve year old Seacrestette behind what used to be called a cash register.
"Why, yes!" I thought to myself. "What could make a better Christmas present than 'Data Rescue II - Emergency Hard Drive Recovery'?" These are among the many thoughts I think, but never say... not that the twelve year old was listening.
ME: "No, this is for me."
SEACRESTETTE: "Great! I'm sure they'll love it! I'll email you your receipt."
ME: "...eh?"
As she slapped a "Lucky you." sticker on the box, the irony was not lost on me.
Don't let that progress bar fool you. It was the first of many.
Lucky me, indeed.
...back.
