Well, that was a total nightmare. I have no idea what could have been so wrong with my hard drive that the technician could not have transferred information to the new one. He said it kept stopping and to continue to attempt it could jeopardize ever getting my information back.

Hence, I was forced to resort to a “data recovery” business. And let me tell ya- this is scary. First of all, there are a ton of scams and hoaxes. None of them seem any different than the other. I came across a news story about how you will send them your hard drive and then they hold it for ransom until you pay exorbitant amounts of money upwards of $2,000.

A quick search combining any of the company’s names and the word “scam” and you’ll get a laundry list of complaints and possibly lawsuits. Some of these places have even been known to keep your hard drive, steal personal information and never return it.

So, I went with one that was quoted in a news article. The news interviewed them as reputable technicians who were commenting on the scam artists. I had to go with them because I had to pick somebody- and I hoped the news would have at least researched these folks before I sent off my hard drive.

Turns out they were legitimate. They recovered my data on a machine. It took them only a few hours- yet I paid $600. It all comes down to “how valuable is this information to you?” “How much do you want to see your children’s pictures again or the last picture known of your father before he died?”

I got the hard drive back- not nearly as quickly as they boasted. They boasted one day turn arounds. It took them a week to even get to mine. Then 3 hours to fix. Then another week to wait for me to send them an external hard drive and to ship it out. All together- a little under three weeks.  They were nonchalant on the phone about my entire work order- and obviously wanted me to know this wasn’t a big priority.

But in the end- I did get those photos back. I did get my documents back. I am back in business.

However, two days after they shipping my hard drive? Mysteriously, someone with all my banking information started charging all sorts of tech equipment to me and I’ve had to register fraud complaints with my bank. Coincidentally they are in the same state as the repair place.

I called the repair place- they were very concerned- but felt it could not possibly be anyone who worked for them.

Oh. My. Gawd. It has taken approximately 7 1/2 hours to bring you this post so you better goddamn enjoy it!
First of all- “Blogging for Dummies” is over my head. I admit it. I need “Tripod for Retards”. Remember Tripod? ANYBODY and I mean anybody could have a Tripod website. You just had to click some shit and you were online. So I figured having a blog would be about the same, right? Right???
Oh no no no no no. That’s not exactly all there is to it. You don’t get to just go to some damn website and click the pretty backgrounds of your choice and then insert photos and text anywhere you want with a click of your mouse.
So far today, I have had three or four meltdowns. The first one was that all of my little tabs on top took you to an Error 404 “File Not Found” black hole. Although it was not their problem, I called my webhosting people LiquidWed. God Bless You, Andy at LiquidWeb. God Bless You for sticking with me through my damn awful shitty Target brand cordless phone conversation that was cutting in and out as you patiently listened to my first meltdown of the day. Iris fixed it for me while Andy put me on hold. It turns out it was something Iris did that she thought she had to do for security reasons, and she didn’t have to do it and somehow it was not allowing us to make new pages. But Iris fixed it. Then Iris and Andy (LiquidWeb) had a nice conversation.
The next meltdown came when I couldn’t upload photos. hahahahaha. I still can’t upload photos. Don’t ask me how I got that one on here because you’ll laugh your ass off. It involves pretending to remember html from the 90’s to get an image on here. Guess that still works.
The last straw was getting the photos from the camera to the computer. Oh that’s a cute little funny one. You see, we bought our teenage daughter what we thought was a really nice digital camera for Christmas a couple of years ago. Turns out we were mistaken and it’s actually a little $150 piece of shit. So she abandoned it with us when she went to college. But she put inside of it a small little memory card and took the big memory card it came with to college with her. So… needless to say, all the little photos I’ve been snapping for a few days for my exciting new blog were actually not being kept on the little memory card. hahahah. Isn’t that cute?
You see, I am actually recouperating from what may have been called a nervous breakdown. hahahah. Yah, probably. And this BLOG, this beautiful blog, is my creative outlet. My way to unwind. My relaxation and hobby. Definitely going to lower my blood pressure and give me the freedom and creative satisfaction I’ve been craving.
Right? Oh, by the way, can you please pass me the Ativan? Thanks.