“It’s all gone, Pete Tong.”

This post’s title is also a movie title. Sometimes, I have random titles or lines/quotes going through my head for weeks at a time. (A perennial favorite is “we were very tired, we were very merry.”) For the past three days, though, this title has been going through my head because although I don’t know any Pete Tong, a lot of things are gone.

For non-regular readers, let me just start by saying it has been one hell of a week for this blogger. To see how it all started, be sure to check out my previous Chit Chat post. All I can really say is that school hasn’t been very daunting at all by comparison.

So, after being completing horrified and scared in my own place of employ, things were quite on Tuesday and Wednesday. I have a total of one hour scheduled of the 24ish that I need to do in site visits this semester, but I feel on the ball. Things were good. Then Thursday started.

It actually started in the middle of the night (aka early morning) when I heard men outside my bedroom window and thought I saw the beam of a flashlight. I was scared, and instead of waking my mother up, I tried to go back to sleep because a part of me knew that if the men really were there I could never feel quite as safe in my own apartment as I had before.

Unfortunately I found out that morning that the men were real. They were police officers and they were in the back terrace area because our neighbor’s apartment had been broken into. He had left his window gates open and gone out. When he came back any valuables that could be taken through the window were gone. This is the second burglary in our building this summer.

After that, my mom tried to go online. Nothing happened. Our cable television provider is also our ISP, and sometimes it does just die. So we weren’t too worried. I decided to check on my own computer to see if I could get online to gauge what kind of problem it was (us or them). When it had booted up, I found a folder with a name along the lines of 234234abc in my trash. Inside the folder were numbered folders–a total of 450 or so. I had been finding recovered files in my trash for months on and off but had ignored it as a minor problem.

This was something new though so I decided to check my disk permissions. The permissions were pretty out of sync, so of course I repaired them. Then, feeling a bit worried, I decided to also verify my disk. There were problems. But my computer seemed unable to repair them. I started up from my installation CD and repaired the permissions and the disks. Except there was one problem that was unrepairable. No matter what I did.

I was left with no choice but to perform a clean install. Now, let me say that last summer my mom’s laptop died. As a result I have been very dilligent in backing up my own files and date on an external hard drive (and a flash drive). I now know that no matter how dilligent you are, it is impossible to gauge the efficacy of a backup plan until you need to implement it. My plan, as it turns out, was lacking.

I have lost all of my internet bookmarks including every site I ever went to for school, various research sites, articles I had filed to read, and resources I thought might come in handy one day. Gone gone gone.

Later, upon trying to open a backed up file of my passwords, I discovered that the file was somehow tied to my old (GONE) computer system and was erased with the clean install. All of my passwords. Gone gone gone. I spent two hours last night feverishly writing down the passwords I could remember and resetting the ones I could not.

This was after backing up any software I could think of (some of which don’t open on the updated system), as well as all of my files (luckily my writing is intact). Performing a clean install of Mac OS X Panther. Upgrading to Tiger. Installing ten software updates. Downloading and upgrading Firefox.

My computer no longer works the same as before. The internet is slower. Recovered files are showing up in the trash again. Apparently six years is old for a computer because this one seems to be obsolete. I can almost hear the death knell.

Then on Friday a woman brought her dog into the library. The dog then decided to relieve itself directly in front of where I was working. I found this amusing, but it was still bizarre.

Today, Saturday,  I passed a broken water main across the street from the library as I headed to work and managed to hurt my own shoulder with my own bag (I’m switching to a smaller one now).

The evening proved better as a lot of the goodies I recently ordered have arrived and I just found out that a sequel to Generation Dead is due out in May 2009.

Now, I’m not asking for a pity party here. But isn’t that a lot to pile onto one week?