Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
::Today's soundtrack: The Killing Joke "Death and Resurrection Show" ::
It has died. And by “it” I mean my computer.
It was a sudden and tragic turn of events. I was recklessly surfing the internets during a thunderstorm when my home was struck by a power surge. Now I, like many responsible electronics owning folks, have a surge protection strip. Unfortunately, the surge rolled a natural twenty and also cut out my power completely for about thirty seconds. This turn of events caused my computer to turn completely off and then restart itself after the thirty seconds of powerlessness had elapsed. And then… there it was. The Blue Screen of Death. Any PC owner knows that blue screen with white letters appearing when Windows is trying to boot up is bad. And this was bad with a capital B.
Well, the Blue Screen of Death suggested that I restart the computer. No good. The Blue Screen returned with a fiery vengeance. It also suggested pressing F8 during the restart to try starting in safe mode. Tried. Failed. The Blue Screen is mocking me with its stoicism.
I phone up Dell. I get a pleasant fellow I like to call “Chuck.” He tells me to try everything that I have already tried as well as three other restart troubleshooting methods. They all fail with the dreaded return of the Blue Screen. Same message every time. It is laughing at me now. Silently laughing.
Well, cure mild wounds proved ill effective, so Chuck says it’s time for some major surgery. Yes, he actually instructs me to open my CPU. Truly, this was the deathiest of all Blue Screens of Death. I have to take things out and put them in new places. Restart. Blue Screen. Shift, restart, Blue Screen. Repeat. Fail. Finally, Chuck has me run a diagnostic. While this test did come up error free, since Windows consistently fails to boot up, there is only one thing for it: return hard drive to original format. Which means manually resetting the hard drive to how it was when I bought the computer. Which means that anything and everything else will be lost. Fuck.
Well, there is a last ditch saving throw for my files. I can extract the hard drive, take it to a Best Buy and have the Geek Squad people attempt to retrieve my files onto a disc. That’s right, attempt. This isn’t even 100%. There is a good chance that all of my music, art files, photos, et cetera will be lost. Thank heavens for FTP for my website files (re: they are copied onto the internet where I can access them with a password and recopy them to my hard drive), and some things are saved on my laptop, but still, it has been about a year since I backed up my crap. Yes, I am a victim of my own undoing. I am aware of that.
So, I drive about three hours to a near Best Buy. I purchase and external hard drive so that they can load the files they heroically rescue onto it. The extraction process takes about four hours. They copy what they find onto the external drive. No one knows what's in there until I can hook this thing up and take a peek. I pay the geek for their hard work, take my two hard drives and trek on home.
Upon returning to my humble abode, I take the external drive and hook it up to my laptop. This is it. The cold, hard moment of truth. Fingers crossed, I double click the folder marked "Geek Squad Back Up." It opens to reveal...
Everything. It's all there. I meaningfully search out some of the most recent things I know I saved such as the pink ponee picture and some new music mp3s. They are there and they work. Thank the holy trinity, Jesus, Buddha and Spongebob. Who knew the Geek squad knew how to cast "Raise Dead"?
The day after I get my hard drive files copied at Best Buy, I phone up Dell again to tell them it's all clear for the hard drive restoration. A different fellow whose name I did not catch walks me through the process. A little less than two hours later, my system is up and running again.
My system works, yes, but it is blank. None of my crap is on it. Now, the arduous task of rebuilding begins. Reinstalling my programs like Adobe and Corel and unceremoniously uninstalling the idiotic prepackaged stuff like the NetZero free trial and such as well as copying my files from the external drive lie ahead. Also, for some odd reason, my speakers don't want to work right now. Hopefully I'll gain some XP after mission completion (I'm thinking of multi-classing out to ranger).
And that, dear friends, is how I spent my Halloween. BOO!!
Let this be a cautionary tale. Have good surge protectors. Back up your files frequently. And most importantly, never surf the webbies during a thunderstorm. Cough. (yeah right)
Also, I'd like to thank The Order of the Stick for the Dungeons & Dragons inspired metaphors and for keeping me sane during this trying time.
William the Bloody (survivor)
