cold rooftops

Just so we're clear, flurries do not equal snow either.

I want accumulation!

I've spent the entire day trying to rescue my laptop from the Great Hard Drive Slow-Down of '09. I know that the second to last week of a semester is not an ideal time to undertake this kind of a mission, but I have been putting it off for over 6 months now. It turns out that there is NEVER a good time to give up a few days on the computer when you are in graduate school. It turns out that the work never stops. And, since in order to finish this semester, it would be convenient to be able to say, save the paper that I am writing, I decided it had to happen now. Or, I guess the computer decided it for me.

This experience has reinforced my feeling that the people at computer stores (mac related places especially) have magical powers and are able to a) do the exact same thing you've done 80 times and yet the time they do it it works, and, more to the point of this endeavor b) put a hex on you if you appear too overly confident. You know, just to take you down a notch. It's like... a business strategy, to stay in demand. The minute I say anything to the effect of "no, you don't need to do that part, I can take care of that at home", I feel the slow creep of dread. Can I? Can I do it at home? There is usually a 50/50 chance.

Anyway, this is far more than you ever wanted to know about my disk space, so I'll just say that after 3 trips, but *only* $170 spent so far, I think I am in the midst of successfully reinstalling my operating system and restoring all of my files. By myself. onto a big gigantor 500 GB hard drive.

Also, it is blowing like mad out there, there are limbs down in my yard, every person I know is stranded somewhere in a blizzard, but all I get are a few measly flakes and subzero wind chills. STL is my winter purgatory, but at least I have a functioning computer so I can view weather reports and pictures from the great white north.