So, I’m typing this up in the basement. I’d like to be upstairs with Takaza but you see, this is where one of the few working computers at my disposal is. I knew that my laptop was in one of those infamous Windows Death Spirals, but I was caught off-guard when I tried to reboot and got “WindowsConfigSyetem is missing or corrupt”. Now it just won’t boot, period, and even when it tries it sometimes shuts off on its own. I have a sneaking suspicion that while there is a problem with the drive there’s also problems elsewhere as well.

We were able to procure an IDE/Mini-IDE interface last night and get the drive hooked up to the roommate’s Win2K box. It reads the drive fine, which is cool. I tried to copy over the contents of my My Documents folder and started getting CRC after CRC error. Badness. So, I set it to run Scandisk last night and went to bed. As soon as John is up and I can gain access to the Win2K box I’ll try copying the data over again. I don’t think I’ve lost any recent data, though some random files from the past are toast. Man, this sucks.

Once I can get everything I need to off the drive, I hope to put it back into the laptop, try to reinstall with the OEM CD’s that I know don’t work, call Sony and get replacement CD’s, and then we’ll see what happens after that. I hope I don’t have to pack it up and send it off, but that’s definitely a possibility. The good news is that I bought the thing on October 30 last year, so we’re still (just) inside the 1-year warranty.

Anyway, if you’re trying to reach me, be aware that I don’t quite have the easy net access that I have in the past. I’ll be checking e-mail regularly, though, somehow, and will endeavor to keep up with friends, email, and MFF business (and to not go insane as I try to fix all this).