Northport, Alabama

First of all, in the interest of disclosure, I have to admit that I totally and completely stole this idea from the multi-talented Alec Long of Shutter and Pupil. Normally, I don’t purloin the intellectual property of other photographers, but there was no other way to explain how thoroughly “fscked” my computer is tonight.

For those who don’t recognize it, this screen is found in the Terminal, a command-line prompt window that reveals OS X’s Unix underpinnings and scares the hell out of most of us. Unless you are incredibly smart or a glutton for punishment, you don’t usually spend much time in this environment — not unless you have some serious problems anyway.

I have some serious problems. Sometime around 11 a.m. today, my PowerBook decided to bite the dust. I have spent the majority of the day trying to recover my files and repair the system with various file system checks (also known as fsck), but at this hour hope seems very dim. Even Nicholas, who troubleshoots on a freelance basis, has declared it a lost cause. I suspect that tomorrow my computer will be speeding its way to the nice people at PowerBookResQ in the hopes that they can perform a very costly miracle.

At least I still have my old clamshell iBook to use until it returns, but it’s not the same. Like all responsible photographers, my photo and website files are backed up to my external hard drive, but the personal stuff — the emails and chat logs, the music and journals — are gone. And the only thing I can really say to that is “FSCK!”

Music of the day: This Photograph is Proof (I Know You Know) by Taking Back Sunday