karma…it’s all karma

Last Saturday I went to the beach with Aaron. We went to Crystal Cove, a little state park near Laguna Beach which is just south of Newport Beach (which has the highest concentration of Ferraris I’ve ever seen). (I also saw a 1970s mint condition Diablo driving around) I took a lot of pictures (and then emailed them) and made some phone calls. Both to rub it in, and to motivate certain people to come visit. Looks like Karma caught up with me though.

Monday night I installed Microsoft AntiSpyWare Beta. It found a bunch of crap on my computer and asked me to restart “for the changes to take effect.” Well…the “changes” had a huge effect. My computer refuses to start. I keep getting a fatal system error that restarts the whole process just before it would get to the logon screen. I tried starting it in safe mode, last known good configuration, and every other option. None of them make a difference. I went to Frye’s and got a $110 Norton SystemSomethingorother that is supposed to recover files…nothing happened. I may be able to get back into my drive when I get (somehow) an XP startup disc and can install the recovery console. However, I’m taking this as a sign that I’ve procrastinated too long in building/buying that new computer I need. The oldest parts on my computer will be five years old this March. The newest parts will be at least four (correct me if I’m wrong, Jon). Even if I get a new computer tomorrow, that won’t get me back the precious files I have on that drive… I NEED those files back! This wouldn’t just be artsty fartsy photoshop files I’d lose…it would be excel documents with insurance information…pages and pages of information on my little longimage.com venture, etc. I haven’t burnt anything off maybe since I left Columbus. I was mulling over buying a backup drive in the meantime while I priced new computer parts…looks like I waited a little too long.