New Hard Drive

FML!

The last two days have been very traumatic for me.  I had some issues with my 1 year old MAC.  :(

Two days ago I was browsing the web, minding my own business as I normally do when I get off work.  I downloaded the new Duggars show and curled up and watched the 30 min length new episode.  After it was complete, I did some minor face booking, when the colored wheel started to spin... the one where it is loading something and the computer needs a minute.  The wheel continued for about 5 minutes and I thought that was a rather excessive amount of time for the cute little wheel to be spinning.

I was unable to force quit through Firefox because I could not get the finger/arrow guy back.  So I turned in off manually, which means that I used my adorable cute finger and turned off my computer by pressing down the power button....  AH!

I then waited a few moments and turned it back on and I could hear, "I think I can, I think I can...", coming from the wheels of the hard drive.  It went back to normal...  I then continued to e-mail and blah blah blah and sure enough that UGLY colored wheel came back on 20 minutes later!!!!!

I called it a night, after I manually shut it off again.  It was crazy!  I had also just downloaded the new GLEE songs from this previous weeks episode, which were awesome!!! In hindsight, I should have only manually shut it off once and ran over to the apple store...

Friday I had to work, but came home and turned in on, this time I was thinking, I might as well try and start backing up the pictures from 2010 before I lose anything.  I have been trying to be good about backing up my picture folders from my computer, not my iTunes for whatever reason, but I do not use the time machine...  again, now I know.  It turned on long enough for me to download the more updated photos, except I downloaded the 2009 folder instead of 2010.... BAH!  User error.  After I realized this it was already in the midst, I figured I would just do it afterward.  Finally, I got 2010 going and saving to my external hard drive when right smack in the middle that DAMN colored wheel pops out and it was all over...  from that moment on, blue screen city...  blue screen later that night after Harry Potter and blue screen again this morning.

I made a 7 pm appointment with the Genius Bar at the Apple store at Fair Oaks, and they proceeded to tell me, YOUR HARD DRIVE IS DEAD.

I was so close to dying...  my warranty time frame is over, OF COURSE!  So I most def. thought I was screwed.  But, I worked my charm and batted my eyes, to a man who might not swing my way, but because I am cute and sweet, he replaced my hard drive for free as if I was under warranty.

It is still too late to actually extend with the apple care package crap, but I am so grateful that I did not have to fork over a hefty amount to replace it.  However, lesson learned, I will, and I mean it, I will use this time machine crap...  I just have to figure it out!