Blinking Question Mark of Death or The Value of Backing Up Your Harddrive in a Tropical Environment

My trusty Mac laptop has finally given up on island life. The humidity, the multiple high impact trips off-island dragged through customs and security, the all night music downloads, have all done "Flash" in.

Sunday I awoke to a blank black screen. No signs of life. After a restart (like CPR on an already brain dead victim) a pulse was reestablished, but unfortunately no activity in the hard drive.



The states of grief ensued.

Denial

"Oh, that's ok!" I have a lot of stuff backed up, ok, sure maybe not everything!" Like all of 2007-08 photos, wedding stuff, my novel (thank you Google docs!). But this would mean a new computer! Sure, the frequent crashes might have been trying to tell me something ("back me up, I'm terminal") and I'd been thinking, "Oh, I'll get a new computer when I absolutely have to!"

Anger

"Oh, my god! I really need all that data! I'm SUCH AN IDIOT!"

Then Anger at AppleStore

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN, YOU WON'T SELL ME A $1300 COMPUTER BECAUSE MY BILLING ADDRESS IS IN AMERICAN SAMOA! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!!"

Bargaining

"Please, oh please boot just long enough for me to get my files! Then I'll let you go for good! I PROMISE!"

Frantic internet searches revealed interesting solutions:
Freeze your computer!










Error Code: "ADF3389THANKYOUFORTHEFREEZEJOBI'MSTILLDEAD45JL23"

Boot from Network Disk, boot from CD, boot from external harddrive, boot it will praying, fanning the computer, and standing it on end.


Yeah, none of that worked.

And so, acceptance.

On a whim early in the morning I turned on the computer.

And it booted and I could copy files. For about a half hour.

So every morning for the past couple of days, like a very senile Uncle, my computer wakes up, talks to my external harddrive for 30-45 minutes and then craps out and sleeps for the rest of the day.

Hopefully, by the time my new digital beauty shows up after Apple deigned to sell me a new computer after I changed my billing address to Oregon, I'll have my files.

Life lesson. If you're going to bring your computer to a tropical island (and if you don't have a computer here you'll feel 50% more isolated) you better expect it to go the way of all things here, bleached, moldy, insect ridden, and ultimately ruined.
But then you get to buy new stuff!