So...

Most of you know that I sent Gigantor in to get fixed a few weeks ago. He came back with a new motherboard and all was good, except that they hadn't replaced his screen with the huge clump of black pixels.

So we sent it back. Everything worked the same way; they sent the box for free to ship my computer, they got it the same day, and I figured I'd get it back by the tenth, like their status update page said they would.

The tenth rolls around. No computer. Same on the eleventh. Then it was the weekend, so I figured that I'd get it back the monday, because the the expected date of return was an 'estimated' date of return and they probably hadn't gotten to the screen yet.

So...now it's Wednesday. We call to find out where my computer is, because the website hasn't changed. And, discover, that in addition to putting a new LCD screen in, they also replaced his motherboard (AGAIN), replaced the keyboard for no apparent reason, and then - for absolutely no fathomable reason at all - decided to run a systems diagnostic, set everything back to factory settings, and completely erased the hard drive.

And, the best part, nothing on there was backed up because Gigantor's motherboard had died, and before he was sent in the second time, no one had any conceivable idea that they would do something this stupid.

So yeah. Everything I had on there, all of my music, all of my stories, and all of my pictures from Costa Rica (and everywhere else) is gone. Just gone.

There's a slim chance we can take the HD out and put it in with some recovery software on it, but...

All of this for a new screen. Wow. Last I checked, 'dead pixel' did not equal 'Golly, Mr. Bigglesworth, I guess this means that the whole computer needs to be looked at; I know, let's completely fuck over our customers! They've gotta have their own back-ups! I know I back everything up, so I'm going to assume that everyone does too!'

The moral of the story is (obviously) back your shit up. But the better moral is: Don't trust HP techies, because they obviously don't know their brains from the bag of horseshit they keep for potpourii under their desk.