Well, the ongoing soap opera that is, "Getting the Laptop Fixed: Mark vs. Future Shop" is starting its final chapter, and it's not going to be a happy ending.
When Dad picked me up from school last night, he passed along a message from my mother that I was to call Future Shop about my laptop. I called, but the guy I was supposed to get in touch with had already taken off for the night. I left a message for him, and when I got home, I asked Mom for the complete message. Future Shop needed my permission to "reload my computer." My mind began reeling at what that meant, and when Future Shop finally got back to me at 9:30 that night, my suspicions were confirmed.
After their 2.5 months of screwing around and needlessly swapping parts, they've finally determined that my operating system is corrupt. They want to reload Windows. Reloading Windows means wiping out the hard drive. I will lose everything. My resume, my 6 completed columns, my 1/4 finished novel, a few short stories I was working on, the various things I was developing for my website...all gone.
I gave them orders not to touch it until their tech guys had taken a look and determined that there's no way to back up anything. I'm going to rush over to Future Shop after school and...the endgame will be played out.
If there's one lesson I've learned from all this, it's BACK UP EVERYTHING OFTEN. You thought I would have learned my lesson in the 6th grade. I lost my computer science project when the 5.25" disc it was stored on got smushed in my backpack. But, that incident made me cocky, too, as I was able to rebuild the project in 15 minutes. (It had originally taken me a month.) And that's what I'm going to have to do now: rebuild.
Other lessons I've learned are "Don't buy Compaq" and "Don't go to Future Shop for computer repairs."
Next issue...It's the End of the World as We Know It
No comments:
Post a Comment