Catastrophic Laptop Failure

So, I was gonna finally get around to posting an update this past weekend. I had it all written up and the pictures were ready, etc. However, yesterday morning my laptop's hard drive decided it was time to suddenly and noisily die before I had time to back anything up. Most of my digital pictures are on there, my entire website, the book I'd been writing for about a year (the most recent version, anyway), work-related stuff, and so on. Lots of irreplaceable stuff may be lost forever. I took it to the Geek Squad in the local Best Buy. They weren't sure if there was anything they could do, but they said they had some tricks up their sleeves and charged me $100 to give it a try. No guarantees, though.

It's been a real busy couple of weeks with a lot of ups and downs, but things are finally starting to quiet down for now, so I should have some updates soon. I did get one thing accomplished today, though: