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Good News

Even though today is like the suckiest day of my year so far, I am smiling right now because Maggie just called and said that she and Jeremy are coming to our party next weekend.

Crash

I’m writing this from the geekboy’s computer, as my computer had a massive hard drive failure for no apparent reason this morning. This is bad, people, really bad. No matter that I won’t be able to get any of the work done today that I needed to. The drive is beyond repair (the geekboy is out buying a new one) and I have most likely lost everything. The good news is, I’m not completely insane and I do back up my freelance work on a regular basis. However, I’ve probably lost at least four days’ worth or so. Not sure yet. My email is not web-based, so all my emails are trapped in the hard drive. The geekboy is hoping he can recover some files, but that’s kind of a long shot, in my opinion. I’m hoping that the past week or two of messages are still sitting on the server and we can pull them down. My big concern right now is having to re-setup all my software. A lot of my programs were living on a shared network drive that unfortunately went down in flames as well. We had been recently talking about purchasing Norton Ghost, which would keep a “ghost” of your system in case of disaster. We didn’t buy it in time. If I sound calm about this, trust me, I’m not. My Thanksgiving holiday will be spent with big puffy eyes from all the crying.

Seriously, I wish I could just wake up and this would all be a bad dream. I understand that in the grand scheme of Horrible Things, this really shouldn’t be up too high on the list. But I am one of those people whose computer is an extension of themselves; it’s personalized and full to the brim with little notes and pictures and hundreds of software programs and things like that. All my work. All my emails. All my settings. Having to try to reconstruct all that is just too overwhelming for me to think about right now.

Anyway, thanks to the geekboy for dealing with this, because I sure can’t.

Brook Arts Center getting a little help from its friends

People from this area are familiar with the Bound Brook Theater. And if you’re not, you should be. It first opened in 1927 and up until Hurricane Floyd, showed films and sometimes local plays. We miss it here in these parts, but it’s on its way back. I saw so many movies there. The place was always very run-down and very cold, but so pretty. I remember seeing Sling Blade there and my friend Paul brought a sleeping bag so we could keep warm during the movie. I saw Good Will Hunting and my Affleck-love hit its peak. I saw In the Company of Men and nearly murdered my friend Justin afterwards for just being a man. We saw Big Night and couldn’t stop ourselves from going out to eat afterwards. I saw Kids and afterwards everyone just shuffled out of the theater, numb and silent. I can’t wait to see the restoration when it’s done.

How to Get a Human on the Phone

Here’s a list of shortcuts to get an actual live customer service rep on the phone for a whole bunch of companies.