The Hardest Drive of All

Okay! Back to writing. I would have had something up yesterday, but my hard drive crashed at work. Which was a minor disaster, and is one of those things I fear because, at an old job, the way they fired people was by deleting their account. Then, when they went to MIS to complain, MIS told them they had to go to accounting. Then, once in accounting, they were confronted by security and removed from the building with only that day’s pay.

The real world sucks.

Most of the stuff on my hard drive was work shit, so I wasn’t really broken up about it. It’s damned inconvenient, because I have seven year’s worth of customized templates that I send out to retarded customers who ask the same fucking questions over and over and over. Most of the personal stuff I had on there was backed up three weeks ago when the CEO sent around an email asking people to stop pirating stuff. I figured I should take off the dozens of GS articles and, you know, pirated software. Which I used for work, because our MIS department doesn’t know how to install stuff like Adobe. Thank god I have a backup of my (current) favorite crazy dog picture:

With a new computer, though, and absolutely everything wiped out, I kind of feel like a new employee. I’ve forgotten all my passwords, I don’t know how to reply to people without my secret stash of templates, years and years of contacts from various departments who can handle special questions are all gone and forgotten. I feel like I should crack open the training manual and start from scratch. Welcome to your new office! Please do not download porn!

On Monday, I was busy answering emails in reply to my big 15 minutes of fame. Most of the questions were about Trigeminal Neuralgia, and you’ll be glad to know that I refrained from sending them to this archived article, because I like to believe that nobody knows about GS.

But everyone does know about GS. The crazy guy in the finance office mentioned it on Monday. I ignored his comment, just like I try to ignore him, because all of you people in finance are back-channeling psychopaths and the entire building thinks you’re even more fucked up than the service center. The first thing anyone said to me on my first day in 2001 was: “Be careful of the idiots in finance. Always examine your paycheck.” Since then, finance has consolidated into a den of vipers…many of whom stab you in the throat with a smile.

MIS may well know about Greatsociety. One thing they do know is that the hard drive crash is my fault. The guy who replaced my computer said that the old hard drive was completely fried – nothing could be recovered. He told my boss that it was probably because I was storing one of the book’s I’ve been publishing on the drive, and “regular hard drives aren’t made for that.”

Really? They aren’t made for five meg PDF’s? Maybe regular IBM hard drives from 1982.

It’s interesting that he mentioned that to my boss, as that explains why he tried to extort money from me earlier in the day. “I can get your personal files off the hard drive,” he said, “but it’ll cost you big bucks.”

If, in fact, my crazy dog picture had been lost, I would have considered the offer. But since I’m not stupid enough to keep all of my books on my office computer, I think I’m okay.

Now, my Dell at home is three years old and acting funky, so let’s hope that hard drive doesn’t crash. Because then I might have to start drinking earlier than usual.

6 Comments on “The Hardest Drive of All

  1. Well, the thing is, the article (which is what he’s referring to) says that I’m in debt. Or maybe he thinks I have the millions.

  2. Wow!!! A 3-year-old Dell and your drive hasn’t crashed yet???

    You’re lucky. Ever since Dell stopped actually manufacturing computers (but contracting out to various EMEA facilities, that arbitrarily hold the Dell logo over it’s doors) and decided to primarily be a marketing company (about 5 years ago), the trend we’ve seen in the industry is that the cheaper components tend to have a higher failure rate.

    At the shop, this month alone… in small-town Georgia, 5 customers have brought in their Dell systems with hard drives that have failed only one week outside of warranty. They use the horizontal data layer type drives – much less expensive, but prone to data corruption and bad sectors.

    In addition, many Dell parts are proprietary to the system, requiring the service tag for ordering replacements as opposed to going to your local store and picking up what you need. (This is so they can track down the correct manufacturing facility.) What a pain.

    My advice…. Ditch the Dell and get a custom-built system!

  3. I still have my last two Dells (now five years and ten years old) which work fine. So that certainly shows you’re right. I did have a hard drive crash early on with this new Dell, so it’s on hard drive #2 right now.

  4. Dell doesn’t manufacture hard drives. I hate Dell as much as the next guy, but their machines aren’t too shabby. Just make sure you get good hard drives.

    Or get a Mac! Wakka wakka wakka.