Just moments after posting, earlier today, my computer crashed. Rather, I should say that every program locked up, in a stream, over a period of ten to fifteen seconds. The menu bar started to freak out, and as nothing else responded, I had to force-shutdown. Seeing this as a signal to take a shower, take a break, etc, I left it at that, and went cheerfully off to cleanse myself and eat some lunch.

When I returned, hit the faithful power button, I was greeted with a grey screen, and a flashing folder icon: Finder icon, ?, Finder icon, ?, over and over. For those of you not on a Mac, this is about the worst thing you can see; it means the computer can’t find your disk to start up from. I booted off the system installer cd, tried the Disk Utility… it couldn’t find a disk to scan. I had J walk me through a few more steps; still no disk. I let AppleCare walk me through a few other things, and still… no disk.

No disk. No disk.

Did I mention I didn’t back up recently? Things like… pictures from our last trip? Two sites’ worth of layout (layered Photoshop) files? Recent downloads and writing resources? (Not too many of these, but a few that really cheese me off.) Some songs I just bought.

Mostly the client layouts bother me; fortunately the one that took the longest was just finalized, so I’m “safe” as it were, but I’d hate to have to recreate it (heck, it hasn’t even launched yet; was going to do that today too.) I hate not having my computer — taking it to a repair shop tomorrow, thank God for AppleCare — but losing data like this… eh. I’ve never experienced it. I remember J’s Big Crash of 2000 and how long it took him to recover; that just wasn’t in my plans for the merry month of May!

Actually I have a tight work schedule this month. Yippee. I’m working on a loaner laptop (my FIL) but I don’t know how long I’ll have it for, or when I’ll be online, etc.

Did I mention I lost at least 500 new pictures for Serenitatis and I don’t even know where I found them originally? Same goes for SKnet. And Common Themes material. And….

I’ve used up enough swear words for the next several months, all in an afternoon. I then alternated between laughing and bawling my head off. Now I’m just sortof numb. This computer isn’t mine and it’s foreign and I don’t like it. [sigh]

It’s not the 13th or anything, is it? No? Just checking.