The crash

It all happened so quietly, so unexpectedly.

It began as flickering, something one dismisses as a quirk.
The next quirk was that the photographs I use as my screen saver disappeared--utterly.
When I next booted up, they'd returned.

And then on Monday came the belligerence. The disk simply didn't want to behave. It made the cursor disappear into corners of the screen, made Word behave like a spoilt child, made the Mac operate at a snail's pace.

And yet, I continued to think the computer is behaving quirky. I'm just going to keep switching it off until it behaves.

And then on Thursday, it became slow and slower and then didn't work at all. And when I switched it off, it didn't return and all I saw was a blinking question mark.

The silence was devastating, the consequences unbelievable.

Off I took it to the Mac dealer. Technicians really are a different breed.
"Oh, looks like it might be a failing disk. If it is, it'll be hard to get you another."
"Why?
"Old technology."
It was made in 2003"
"Old technology."
"How much?"
"We have to diagnose first."
"Okay?"

Next morning---ring, ring...ring, ring--ring,ring.

"Hello"
"Jason from the Mac shop"
"Hey."
"It's a disk failure. It'll be two hundred bucks. Do you have your files backed up?"
"No. I thought my flashcard was backing up and just found out yesterday when I checked it at a friend's that it wasn't"
"Not so good."
"Can you recover""
"Probably not. It won't mount. We'll have to end it to a outside date recovery people."
"How much?"
"$600."
"WHAT?"
"That's only if they don't have to use a clean room."
"Did you say 'clean room'?"
"It's where they wear white suits and work in sanitized room. You've seen them on CSI, no?"
"How much?"
"Up to $2000."
SHIT...F***. SHIT." Silence. "Listen, put in a new hard drive. I've gotta think about the recovery thing."
"Take your time."
"F***"