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I Found Myself Another Lost Weekend

Well, hey there, folks — long time, no see.

I feel I should apologize for my unannounced — and unplanned, and frankly, for the most part, unwanted — hiatus over the weekend. I’d like to say that it was unavoidable, and regale you with some tale of international intrigue, or a life-and-death interstate jaunt, or maybe even an alien abduction. Sadly, I can do none of those. My intrigue tends to live right here close to home, the most life-or-death thing I typically do is decide which rugby to wear in the morning, and… well, I don’t live in a trailer park, so there’s apparently little chance the little green men are coming to probe me anytime soon. What they see in those mullet-headed Cro-Magnons, I’ll never know. Silly aliens.

No, my excuse is far more mundane and straightforward. It goes a little something like this:

I didn’t write on Friday night because I was out with a buddy of mine at a bar on Friday night. It was a fun Friday night, especially because there were free vodka drinks on Friday night. I had a good time on Friday night. Free vodka is good.

I didn’t write on Saturday or Sunday because I was out with a buddy of mine at a bar on Friday night. It was not a fun Saturday or Sunday, especially because there were free vodka drinks on Friday night. I had no fun on Saturday or Sunday. Free vodka is evil. Evil and very, very painful.

So, that was my weekend. I’d appreciate having no more mention of ‘vodka’ for quite some time now, if you don’t mind. Like a couple of decades — that would be good. As a matter of fact, the closest thing to a Russian liquid I want to see for a long while is Milla Jovovich ‘poured’ into a tight outfit in her next movie. Which, frankly, is way better than booze to begin with. But I digress.

And, as usual, I exaggerate, just a little. I was actually back to my abnormal self by midday Sunday or so. But instead of tip-tap-typing here, I decided to get tough and serious — and maybe even ‘rough and ready’, though somehow that phrase reminds me of scary pornos — about recovering the crap off my crippled hard drives. So I dug in, and spent a few hours getting ass-deep in data recovery doubletalk.

The good news — if you’re me, anyway… and if you’re me, this is just about the only good news there is, so listen up — is that I finally managed to retrieve just about everything I wanted. Standup clips, web server info, all my MP3s, even my High Heat Baseball team files. And there was much rejoicing. (‘Yaaaaaay.‘)

But life is not all perky bunnies and fuzzy nipples, folks.

(Um… yeah. I think I got those flipped around. Just switch the adjectives there, and I think we’re all good. Perky rabbits are fine, but there’s nothing good about fuzzy nipples. Trust me — I’ve got a pair myself. Ick.)

Anyway, I’m not out of the woods yet, is what I’m saying. I’ve got the data now, but I’ve still got to wipe the drives clean, re-install the OS, load a bunch of software, get the wireless card working again, and load the data back where it goes. I’m a little queasy just thinking about it. Not as queasy as I felt Saturday morning, perhaps, but still — there’s some tummy-rumbling happening over here. Not cool.

In the meantime, I’m also out… lessee, carry the one, tack on another thirty… about a hundred and fifty bucks for the software I bought online to recover the files. It took one to get the damned computer to see the drives, and two more to reach into the muck and pull out the shit I wanted. I should have just forgotten the whole thing and rented a hooker to help me forget about it. And that would’ve only taken a half an hour. I’ve really got to think these things through.

Of course, that’s not as bad as it could be. The place that built the computer for me wanted a hundred and twenty-five just to look at it. Not work on it. Not find my files. Not deliver the damned things to me on a platinum-plated floppy disk. No. Just look at it. I don’t know how these fuckers got themselves such a sweet deal, but dammit, I want a cut! Hell, you could make a living doing anything if you can charge that kind of money just to examine the problem, no guarantees. Shit, I could do anything:

‘Hmmm… well, sir, it looks like it might be a hard drive failure. But hey, those things are always going down. Easy come, easy go. Speaking of which… you got your wallet with you?‘

‘Yup. That’s probably the alternator. Or the ignition. Hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the brakes, or the shocks, or that little pokey thing you stick in the oil tank. Who knows with these complicated cars these days? That’ll be two hundred bucks.‘

‘Well, gee, Mrs. Johnson, that sure looks like a broken arm. But what’re ya gonna do? It happens. Oh, and you can make the check out to ‘Dr. Charlie’‘

So, I suppose I’m getting off easy. On the other hand, I’ve been working on this shit for a couple of weeks now, so it’s probably going to even out, assuming my time is worth more than six pesos an hour. Which it probably isn’t, of course, but I’m trying to keep a positive attitude here. Don’t fuck it up for me, people.

Anyway, I thought I should mention — and then explain, in as long-winded a way as humanly possible — why I’ve been AWOL for the past couple of days. I suspect things will be back to normal now, minus a few hours here and there to nurse my computer the rest of the way back to health. That’s about the only blip I see rearing it’s ugly head in the next little while.

Assuming I stay off the vodka, that is. Damn. Now I remember why I’m a beer guy. That shit was not cool, dammit. Sheesh.

* By the way, in case you don’t recognize it, the post title is a lyric from a cool Beat Farmers song I like. I don’t want you getting the impression I do this all the time, or anything. I’m getting too damned old for that shit. Just for the record.