My laptop's HDD officially died on Sunday night after I spent 4+ hours trying to fix it. It's long out of warranty, of course.

The kicker is that unlike the last time this happened, I'd actually backed stuff up. Or rather, I thought I did - the service I was using to back things up apparently stopped doing so in December 2008 - but their software on my computer cheerfully reassured me every night at 11pm that it had just backed up all of my files.

And that's why I keep important information on my External too.

Dropbox. And sorry for your loss. Harddrives are generally more precious than children.

I didn't lose anything absolutely essential because I keep those files backed up separately in two places.

Unless you're planning on making wall-sized posters, you don't really need more than 8 or 9 unless you want to be able to zoom in on someone's pores. I've heard that's the limit of what the human eye can discern unaided. One of my dad's students does photography and makes decently large images with his 9 MP camera that still look better than a film camera. Then again, he's got the fancy paper and printer and other hardware, so maybe that has something to do with it.

Maybe better than what Wal-Mart will get you from your point-and-shoot camera, but good ol' 35mm, 100 ISO film shot in a good SLR and printed from good lab equipment will also let you see texture on nose hairs. Also, while you might not see a difference if you print the whole frame on a 3x5, if you crop heavily and print on something more like an 8x10, the difference becomes noticeable. It's not something that you would be able to put your finger on at a glance (or maybe ever, if photography isn't your thing), but a real crisp, clear image pops out much better than anything with loss.

I've had this project I should have been working on over the break, but didn't because I'm a lazy bum and it's not too complicated. But now that I'm sitting down to actually do it, I'm having an extremely basic issue with the server that after a few aggravating hours I'm pretty sure the problem is not on my end, so now I'll probably have to e-mail my professor something along the lines of "hi, can you look into this issue which I should have taken care over a month and a half ago?" -__-

DROPBOX IS AWESOME

My rant is having to learn how to use hair straighteners. And burning myself. Not a good start, GHDs.

My rant:

I work thirdshift at a hotel. Big whoop. No one gives a flying :censored:. I work eight days in a row, I get six days off. Big whoop. No one gives a flying :censored:. Unlike half of the other employees there, I actually work. I do my job, and I do it damn well. I just finished my eight days. The other third shift employee just called in saying that her daughter is sick, so she's not coming in tonight. Guess who has to fill in? They tried to console me with "Well, you're getting more hours", but if I wanted to work forty hours a week, I'd have signed up for full-time. I signed up for :censored:ing part-time, god damn it.

I am, quite frankly, beyond pissed off. I have been working there for, I'd say, four or five months now. This is the third or fourth time I, or someone else, has had to fill in for her sorry ass during that time frame. I hope she dies in a fire. Really, I hope she dies, provided I don't have to fill in for her then, as well. Worthless garbage.

tl;dr RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGE

be glad you have a job. I went from making 14.40 an hour, 58 hours a week to unemployment, to nothing. I'd kill somene just to have your job.

It's raining. At the end of January. In Minnesota. When it's properly cold again, driving is going to be hell, especially considering that most people here don't know how to drive in the best of times.

I'm going back in-game, where things make more sense.

There are no new touhous in the Hisoutensoku patch. I wanted Nitorin.

It went from raining to snowing here. Is that going to make it worse? Should I bunker up in the house and refuse to leave? Is the world ending because winter isn't as cold as usual this year? Inquiring minds want to know!

Rain to snow usually means ice, so a day to let the road crews do their thing is probably not a bad plan!

As for the rest, no.

One of my Operating System files got corrupted.

Right now, I'm running off a Puppy Linux RAM-based OS and struggling to fix this.

I have a Photography final due tomorrow. All of my photographs are stored on this computer. No, we still haven't gotten a flash drive. I also just finished a 5 hour translation project that is also stuck on this computer.

System restore will not function, no form of memory diagnostics or startup repair wants to work.

Reinstalling Vista is not an option unless I can salvage these files. Sigh. This is going to be a long day.

(Why do I like this temporary OS more than I do my regular actual Vista? Maybe I should try Linux at some point. Weird.)

Pop out the hard-drive, throw it in someone elses machine, rip the files to your flash drive. Fix later.

Actually, if you're using something like Knoppix, you should still have full access to your hard drive. Use a flash drive or e-mail to send things out.

EDIT: Also, Vista and Win7 don't require you to reformat to reinstall your operating system. Just throw the disk in and follow the prompts.

I am dissatisfied with the relationship I have with diacetylmorphine.

Having to deal with grumpy people. First was someone who was getting angry over something I had absolutely no control over and then another getting upset and grumpy because I was having problems exchanging his adult movie for another one. Let alone the fact it feels like my chest is constantly being constricted these days making work even less enjoyable than normal. Oh well. Only 3 more days until I get a day off.

I'm doing my physics homework and I cannot figure out how to do part A of the problem. I know how to do B and C when I get there, but I need A to do those.


Edit: Got it! Clearly my mind works on levels I'm not even aware of.