To recap… Late last week my laptop hard drive failed. All data on it is unrecoverable, making it the most expensive paperweight I have ever owned.

Adding insult to injury (or vice versa) my primary backup drive also appears to have failed. I may or may not be able to recover anything from it.

Fortunately, one of the guys at work loaned me a laptop for the time being.

Even more fortunately, most of my crucial data (writing, photos, music) was backed up at a third location. God Bless Mozy.

And I dusted off an old machine at home, so now I can keep working through the Third Draft. I lost five or six days, but still…

While this is all good, none of these things are actual silver linings.

That is, the bad thing has not, as yet, brought anything good to go along with it.

The ill wind just blew. That’s all. While it wasn’t particularly hard, a few things did fall over. And the Customer Service Rep of the Universe (see left) hasn’t been much help picking them up again.