Suckitude and Awesomeness

Last Tuesday, I spilled Coke all over my laptop during gaming. I cleaned it out as quickly and as thoroughly as I knew how. Unfortunately, it was not sufficient. I left backing up my data overnight, just in case. I woke in the morning to see a black screen reading, "Operating system not found." And none of my data had been backed up.

Turns out I fried my hard drive. Scorch marks and everything. My data was not recoverable. I lost my campaign notes, character sheets, movies, TV shows, e-books, thousands of image macros and pages of manga, and a hefty chunk of my thesis. Suckitude.

The awesomeness is that the only thing fried was the hard drive. I picked up a new 160 hard drive for $78 and reinstalled my OS and it runs fine. The keyboard is still a little tacky and some keys are stiff, but $78 is vastly superior to the cost of replacing the whole laptop. Especially when unemployed.

Well...

Today was unexpectedly difficult. I attended the funeral of my Mom's cousin. I didn't know him terribly well, but they had been very close. He has three kids, all about five years apart. Matthew is ~16, the same age I was when Dad died. It's so easy to see myself in him. What a stupidly hard age to lose a parent.

The eldest, Rebbecca, is getting married in June. Her Dad won't be there to walk her down the aisle. She bore up under the pressure well today and took excellent care of her little sister. She broke down at the cemetery though. It was planned poorly, and the family didn't get a chance at the grave by themselves. Her breakdown was embarrassingly public. I hope she wasn't embarrassed or ashamed. She shouldn't have been.

The hardest moment in my life was after the graveside service for Dad. There is nothing, NOTHING, so horrifyingly final as watching Dad's casket being lowered.