Good News and Bad News

Okay, here I am. The good news is that the cost of repair for the Seattle breakdown was "only" $200. It turned out that it wasn't the clutch itself, but the so-called "slave cylinder". I was expecting a bill in the range of a thousand bucks, so that was a huge relief.

Bad news: The hard drive is still fried. My friend the computer geek suggested that I freeze it for several hours.

Yeah, right. And tomorrow I'm going to go after Bigfoot, go for a ride on a flying saucer, and join Scientology.

Well, it turns out that freezing a recalcitrant hard drive is one of those time-honored "quick fixes" that actually works a lot of the time. And I thought he was sending me on a high-tech snipe hunt. So I tried it, wrapped the drive inside a sealed bag to keep out condensation, and stuck it in the freezer for about six hours.

Nothing.

But that's about what I expected, so I didn't lose anything except time. The next step, I guess, is to send it off to one of the repair shops to see if they can do anything with it. I did some research on the Internets and found a place that has a good reputation and doesn't charge the traditional arm and a leg.

The price they quoted me?

$200(!)

Something very odd about those bookends, but I guess we can chalk that up to Synchronicity...

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with my usual observations, declarations, subversive humor, left-wing rants and accusatory finger-pointing.