It's Been a Rough Couple of Days

Oh, yeah. It's been fun. Trim the tree and singing carols kinds of fun. NOT. Monday was such a good day... followed by the first days of hell as we know it. I go to work and see a co-worker left my computer on all night. Not that big a deal. Until I go to re-boot my computer and I receive the black screen of death. The one that tells me to pick an option. You know, the list starting with "Safe Mode". What a joke. Like there is anything safe about what we're about to do.

Needless to say, "Safe" mode wasn't an option. It didn't like that or any other option on the list. It just kept re-booting. Over and over and over. The operating disks that came with my system had exceptionally scary options on it, too. Options like "formatting the hard drive". Not a happy thought when my most recent backup was a month ago. I know, I know...don't lecture me. Be glad it was only a month ago.

I call our home office "IT" people. I get mumbling and the number for the corporate account tech support people. Uh huh. Yeah. I'll call them. No. I won't let them reformat my hard drive.

Luckily, I actually got a woman I could understand. She spoke English quiet well. After dealing with tech support people in India and other foreign countries in the past, I ventured to ask. Florida. I can handle this.

To her credit, she was very good. She walked me through many, many things - not once trying to direct me to the deadly "reformat" command. We ran some different repair features - one which ended up taking a mere four hours (I have a very large hard drive). Finally, after going through the repair I was able to bring my Windows desktop back. No programs would work, but I was able to use my CD burner and my tape backup driver and I was able to back up everything I could possibly think of that hadn't been backed up. I got home about 10 o'clock last night with a vague sense of relief knowing if the whole thing went down I now had my data available to reinstall.

This morning I was greeted by the IT people telling me if I would take my tower to a computer guru they knew (40 miles away) they and he thought my hard drive could be "ghosted" to another hard drive he had on hand. I'm game. Off I go, lighthearted optomism my passenger.
He tells me he should have it done by the end of the day. I give him my cell phone number.

Two hours later I get a call. Partition one is junk. This has created a problem with his plan. With partition one being bad, his 'ghosting' program won't even start. Huh. I tell him to call the IT people. He tells me he's got another one or two tricks up his sleeve. Yeah. I'm not holding my breath.

Another hour goes by and I get a call from the IT people. They tell me just what guru guy has said. He's stuck. Now I have options. Do I want him to install the new hard drive, spend hours loading my information and programs onto it only to turn around next week and repeat the process when the new computer they are going to order me comes OR do I just want to wait for the new computer to come and do it once. Well... let me think... DUH.

So... I have a vacation. I'm going to be off work until next week when the new computer comes. Except for the fact that when it comes I'm going to be so busy I won't be able to see straight, I'm kinda enjoying the fact I'm going to be off a couple extra days around Christmas. Now I just need to get some sleep.