Technology sucks.
As a technology instructor, that feels a little blasphemous, but there you have it.
Some of you know that my precious custom build, my baby, died last summer. We'd been together for six years, in various incarnations. It was an aging workhorse - Athlon, AGP geForce, monster of an Asus mainboard. And as giddy as I was to gain a whole new system in one fell swoop (as opposed to upgraded bits-and-pieces), I was sorry to say goodbye. Especially since, when it wheezed its last breath, it took all my data to the grave with it. Documents, pictures, music... years and years worth of files. But never fear, I was a techie! I knew the golden rule. I had a backup drive.
Ever see those scifi movies where the aging technology watches as it's replaced by the bigger and better? Ladies and gent, meet my backup system. Not to overwhelm you with geekspeak, but my old system ran IDE opticals (Parallel ATA). The shiny new system runs Serial ATA drives. Exclusively. And never the twain shall meet, at least not in my box. It's sound design, in theory. Not so much in practice.
I tried converter cards. I tried the dreaded Belkin transfer cable. All at fairly hefty price tags, and all in the name of keeping things internal. When I saw that a clean swap was not to be, I finally caved and ordered an external enclosure.
If you guessed that said enclosure doesn't like my drive, you get ten points. And a cookie.
I know the enclosure itself works, as I tried it with two other IDE drives - Vista picked them up like giant flash drives, and it was smooth sailing. They were even legacy drives, so I can't blame existing data. Problem is, this makes no sense. It's powering up, I can hear it spinning. It's listed in Device Manager, correctly labeled and everything. The system just refuses to access it. Same thing happens when I plug it in to the laptop, which runs XP.
Faced with the idea of having lost everything - my entire design portfolio, hundreds of pictures I don't have anywhere else, thousands of songs, and four years worth of writing - I did the only thing a girl can do, in situations like these. The most natural thing in the world.
I called my Daddy. And I bawled.
I have the best Dad in the world when it comes to things like this, the kind who's immediately out for blood, and will not rest until he has killed/maimed/detonated to defend your honor/sanity/mangled and mutilated heart. Which means, of course, that calling him was a bad thing, since there is absolutely nothing he can do here (despite heartfelt, repeated pleas from his end). And now I only feel guiltier, considering that - unbeknownst to me - my sister called this morning with similar waterworks on parade, having somehow severely overdrawn her bank account. So then I had to call and apologize. It may have been more effective had I not cried again.
At any rate, I have staunched the flow of tears. I have allowed my brain to start firing again. (Somewhere in there, I may have eaten shrimp chow mein and watched myself some Ronon.) And I have talked to my IT guy, aka the Little Brother I Never Wanted But Maddeningly Adore Anyway, whose first response to my plight was "Aww, Court-Court lost her stuff?". He was entirely unhelpful (and, admittedly, as puzzled as I am), but he tried, so I can refrain from killing him for one more day.
And I do have a plan. A plan I'm fairly confident will work.
This better be a "Be All My Sins Remember'd" Rodney plan, and not a "Trinity" Rodney plan. Otherwise, much like that poor solar system, I am full-out fucked.
Some of you know that my precious custom build, my baby, died last summer. We'd been together for six years, in various incarnations. It was an aging workhorse - Athlon, AGP geForce, monster of an Asus mainboard. And as giddy as I was to gain a whole new system in one fell swoop (as opposed to upgraded bits-and-pieces), I was sorry to say goodbye. Especially since, when it wheezed its last breath, it took all my data to the grave with it. Documents, pictures, music... years and years worth of files. But never fear, I was a techie! I knew the golden rule. I had a backup drive.
Ever see those scifi movies where the aging technology watches as it's replaced by the bigger and better? Ladies and gent, meet my backup system. Not to overwhelm you with geekspeak, but my old system ran IDE opticals (Parallel ATA). The shiny new system runs Serial ATA drives. Exclusively. And never the twain shall meet, at least not in my box. It's sound design, in theory. Not so much in practice.
I tried converter cards. I tried the dreaded Belkin transfer cable. All at fairly hefty price tags, and all in the name of keeping things internal. When I saw that a clean swap was not to be, I finally caved and ordered an external enclosure.
If you guessed that said enclosure doesn't like my drive, you get ten points. And a cookie.
I know the enclosure itself works, as I tried it with two other IDE drives - Vista picked them up like giant flash drives, and it was smooth sailing. They were even legacy drives, so I can't blame existing data. Problem is, this makes no sense. It's powering up, I can hear it spinning. It's listed in Device Manager, correctly labeled and everything. The system just refuses to access it. Same thing happens when I plug it in to the laptop, which runs XP.
Faced with the idea of having lost everything - my entire design portfolio, hundreds of pictures I don't have anywhere else, thousands of songs, and four years worth of writing - I did the only thing a girl can do, in situations like these. The most natural thing in the world.
I called my Daddy. And I bawled.
I have the best Dad in the world when it comes to things like this, the kind who's immediately out for blood, and will not rest until he has killed/maimed/detonated to defend your honor/sanity/mangled and mutilated heart. Which means, of course, that calling him was a bad thing, since there is absolutely nothing he can do here (despite heartfelt, repeated pleas from his end). And now I only feel guiltier, considering that - unbeknownst to me - my sister called this morning with similar waterworks on parade, having somehow severely overdrawn her bank account. So then I had to call and apologize. It may have been more effective had I not cried again.
At any rate, I have staunched the flow of tears. I have allowed my brain to start firing again. (Somewhere in there, I may have eaten shrimp chow mein and watched myself some Ronon.) And I have talked to my IT guy, aka the Little Brother I Never Wanted But Maddeningly Adore Anyway, whose first response to my plight was "Aww, Court-Court lost her stuff?". He was entirely unhelpful (and, admittedly, as puzzled as I am), but he tried, so I can refrain from killing him for one more day.
And I do have a plan. A plan I'm fairly confident will work.
This better be a "Be All My Sins Remember'd" Rodney plan, and not a "Trinity" Rodney plan. Otherwise, much like that poor solar system, I am full-out fucked.