Under the Skin

So, good news all around! 1) My computer is still dead, but here's the story. My hard drive failed. Irreparable. So, I bought a new hard drive (a bigger one, I use to have a 60 GB, now I have a 320 GB). I bought a SATA, and I needed an EIME or something like that, but that will be remedied shortly. I can return the SATA for a full refund, so yeah. It's getting there 2) I had a promising interview with a medical personnel temp agency on Tuesday. They think they'll be able to find me something in Med Records or medical reception. They sent my resume to the VA Clinic in Rochester, and we'll see what happens with that. 3) I called Prometric today. They're the company that manages the Nurse's Aid licenses for NY. It's not a sure thing, but my application for my Washington State registration to become NYS certification, has apparently been processed and a "certificate" was mailed on Wednesday. I think that sounds like it was approved. So, there...

So, my faithful Acer 2480, Windows XP Media Center Edition, kicked it on me. On Monday, I pushed the power button, and unfortunately, I got the lovely Acer splash screen, however, after that, nothing but the black screen of death. I am probably too self-reliant. I like to fix things myself. Computers included. If I don't know how, I will go and figure it out. So, I embarked on a mission. This mission included, but was not limited to, buying Avanquest Fix-it Utilities, external hard drives, trying to repair with XP recovery console, loading Linux and trying to rescue my files, all sorts of stuff. I got everything safely off of the D, but the C (which for a long line of reasons is not backed-up) had screwy file allocation, which I think--now that I've sorted through a lot of online info, and played with the computer-- is probably what caused the inability to boot up anyways. There are many, many things that I must rescue from said C drive, so after a successful rescue mis...