I'm back, baby.

Computer fixed, hard drive installed, data retrieved. All in all, it's been a relatively productive couple of days, if "productivity" can be defined as standing up after someone kicks you in the nards.

Still not entirely sure what went wrong, though I'm relatively certain it wasn't my fault after all. Mind you, that allows for some pretty big coincidences -- that I just happened to be doing spring cleaning on my hard drive, that during that time the hard drive began refusing to boot Windows, and that either before or after this happened the adapter cable which I use to charge my phone and access my external hard drive experienced a power surge in one of the usb ports, rendering it unusable. Is it possible one of these three things caused the other two to happen? Possibly, but the answer to that is just beyond the knowledge of computers that I have. The upswing is my spare external, the 2.5 hard drive ripped from my Toshiba's death by overheating, was still all perfectly accessible and had all data intact, which I was able to easily retrieve with a new adapter cable [this one straight from newegg.com, with a much better rating and several comments to the effect of "not like the cheap crap one that came with the external Randall bought that was made in China"]. So, lucky break there. Lucky like, after said kick in the nards, the doctor icing them down notices a mole and catches that melanoma before it gets out of hand.

But all in all, I am happy things didn't turn out a lot worse. My biggest complaint right now is how sore my hands are -- it'll sound ridiculous, but when I run a computer, I run it a certain way, and want it to be able to do certain things, so once I installed my computer's new brain I had to have it relearn all the old tricks I liked so well. Even going from "blank slate" reinstall as I did, it still took a while to get everything back to normal, and my hands and wrists hurt like... well, a lot like how I've heard carpel tunnel described. Doubt it's so serious, but typing hurts, and as a pretty big computer junkie, that's sort of a new experience for me. I've kind of forced myself to push through it [kind of had to, still had some work to finish up last night], and it's already improved from the agony I woke up in, so now as long as I don't put too much physical pressure on my hands [pushing off/against things are mostly what hurts now], everything should be fine.

Man. Remember when I used to post about my physical health and well-being on here all the time? Takes me back.

One other thing of note about today, or rather yesterday now, is that my first gig [re: dentist's website] with Terry Lively and Vandalia Productions ended. I'm not "out" out, as I've offered to give the website another once over before it's published, and there's a press release I drafted for them that they'll probably want changes made to, but otherwise, this first project is done. There's been some talk of about other jobs, maybe something relatively soon, and the nice thing about copy work is that it's almost always needed on any sort of project. So, fingers crossed.

Next weekend is Boston. I assume the rest of this week will be the usual stuff, getting ready for that, and I think I have another book on the way to review.

More soon. When it doesn't hurt to post.

In the meantime, go read something cool. Like this, or this, or any of this. And I think a friend of mine's been doing some convention coverage here.