A Tale of Two Luckies

So there I was on a work call Tuesday morning via the computer, having my typical conversation: “Well normally I wouldn’t espouse discussion of the standard model of Higgs Boson, due to the circulating particles that…”

….when POOF just like that I was cut off. What the hell? My laptop had suddenly turned off, apropos of nothing. I try to turn it back on. Whir, click, constant grey screen. I try safe mode. Whir, click, blue screen. I try some random shit that I read about on the internet using the hated PC, and again, nada. Hmm. Not good.

Did I mention that this week I’ve had MAJOR deliverables due for all my clients? Yeah, pretty bad timing.

After realizing that my Macbook isn’t going to magically start itself, I make an appointment at the Apple Store 45 minutes away and head over. There, I’m eventually helped by a very nice guy who runs all the standard diagnostic tests and can’t figure out what’s wrong. He tries reloading the operating system – it stilll won’t go past the grey screen. He does other magical things with odd commands that us mere mortals have no knowledge of – still nothing.

Uh oh.

Finally he decides to take it in back (aka the dreaded “in back,” kind of like the euthanasia room at the shelter), and when he comes back, he looks solemn.

Apple Guy: I have some bad news. It looks like it needs a new hard drive.

Me: Uh oh. How much will that cost?

AG: Probably around $200.

Me: Oh, whew! That’s not bad – let’s get it done.

Problem solved, right? No. Because AG comes back in 15 minutes or so, looking even more solemn.

AG: Well, we tried replacing the hard drive…and it still doesn’t work. So that’s not the problem

Me: What could be wrong with it?

AG: We have no idea.

Uh oh.

We decide to leave it there overnight and they’ll run more tests on it, and I go home dejected and Apple-less. This morning, I talk to AG 2 who says it’s the logic board that went kerplooey, and that needs to be replaced but they need to order a part. That’ll be about $600. Sigh.

I’ll remind you, gentle reader, that this is all happening during a week when I have major deliverables due to various clients. With all of my work on that laptop. Which is now dead.

In my mind, that would qualify me for the shittiest luck in the world. As in, a crushing blow, to lose absolutely everything from my laptop. I. Would. Be. So. Fucked.

I say “would be,” because here’s the weird part. This all happened on Tuesday. On Monday, I had had enough of my annoyingly slow computer driving me crazy. Crazy! This had been going on for months! I’d have just a few programs open on the computer, MS Office, Firefox, nothing that would seem to suck up a lot of resources, and the computer would just grind along. Now, I hadn’t been to the Apple store for anything computer problem related probably since I bought the laptop 3 years ago. But on Monday for some reason I decided that hey, I would drive the 45 minutes just to have them take a look at it, see if they could figure out what was going on. (Passed all the diagnostics then too, turned out I just needed more RAM to combat the slowness.)

And of course, before I took it in….I backed the whole damn thing up.

Yep, after not backing it up for over a year, in spite of scribbling notes to myself of “back up computer!” – I hadn’t done it. Until Monday.

Unrelated to that, my computer died on Tuesday.

Weird, no? So my thinking at this point is that that is some damn fine luck I have. I picture my guardian angel Stan, my little beer-drinking chain-smoking bald guy who likes to bowl, getting distracted and then realizing oh shit, I’ve gotta do something about this! But he’s late to the game, or can only do so much, so he throws in a “fix” that makes things less of a catastrophe, some saving grace. This seems to happen a lot with Stan, whereby something horrible happens in my life…but it could have been so much worse.

So, thanks Stan, I owe you a beer. And maybe could you arrange for me to win the lottery? I promise I’ll start playing. K’thanks.