collapsing the waveform

Last night, my macbook started having short freezes, and iPhoto wouldn't launch. I rebooted. The start sequence got stuck at the apple logo loading screen. Many reboots (safe mode, taking out and replacing battery, etc) all stayed at this screen.

I decided to take it to the Apple Store. Best case: running a disk utility would repair the error and make things good as new in 10 minutes. Worse: the logic board is broken, but no data loss. Even worse: the hard drive is hosed.

All morning I found myself mentally assessing the probabilities of each, hoping for a good outcome.

In late afternoon, I went to my appointment at the Apple Genius Bar. They connected an external hard drive and quickly declared that my hard drive failed, such that the partition is unreadable. "Your data is gone," they said cheerfully, to make sure I understood.

As I walked out of the store, I was surprised to find that I felt better. This was one of the worse outcomes. But now my mental background processes could start cataloguing the list of apps I need to reinstall, and non-backed up scripts to rewrite. Collapsing the waveform brought its own relief.

I think it's due to my myers-briggs being a J rather than a P. If I were a P, perhaps I would prefer the time of innocence, before knowing with certainty that my hard drive is toast.

especially if you taught them using emacs

Today I received an email where the sig was very amusing:

If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day;
if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime.
--- Anonymous

I showed it to my programmer friend, and we both fell about laughing.

crumpets

Keith: "The XX bakery has new management, and it's not as good as before. One of the three original founders died from a heart attack."

Me: "Oh, that's too bad."

Keith: "His name was on the lease so his wife or girlfriend kicked out the other two, and took it over."

Me: "That's terrible! Was she his wife or his girlfriend?"

Keith: "Both."

Me: "He was married and had a mistress?"

Keith: "Yes."

Me: "So which one took over the lease?"

Keith: "They did it together."

Me: "Wow. Well, I guess they had similar tastes."

Keith: "United by their grief and greed."

Me: "Like many a capitalistic venture."