the useless Sad Turd Day

It's a gorgeous day outside. I was happy to spend a chunk of my morning and early afternoon on two useless errands in the neighborhood. The first errand took me and my comatose computer to Yongsan's Jeonja Land. Jeon-ja means "electronics"; it's one phoneme away from jeong-ja, which means "sperm."

The Mac center, located on the third floor of the building, was unable to help me; they provided me with a number for a Mac service center in Ch'ungmuro, but they were unhelpful, too.

I lugged my Mac back to my dorm, then went on my second useless errand: to pay my phone bill. The guy at the LG Telecom office told me that I didn't have to pay anything. I replied that this was strange, because I had just received an email from LG saying I needed to pay W48,000 for the month of April (the fee includes a late penalty-- bad Kevin). The guy shrugged and said, "Just come back a bit before the 26th of the month." And that was that.

So I lumber-waddled to Smoo, spent a few hours doing exam ratings (extra work we occasionally get from one of the offices in my building), and am contemplating what I'll be having for dinner. I'm also working on a Korean-to-English translation that someone like Charles could probably do in five minutes, but which has already taken me a couple hours (I started Friday evening). I'm pretty sure I'll be back in this office after dinner, not merely to finish the translation, but also because-- just as I was typing these lines-- another request for more test ratings arrived in my email box.

I'm not sure how best to proceed with my hard drive woes. The emailer/commenter consensus seems to be that (1) the data are probably gone, and (2) I should just get a new hard drive. I suppose I need to buy a hard drive that hasn't been formatted, but I don't know whether my Mac OS X installer software will automatically format the disk. I assume it will, but that's an expensive assumption. Where to buy, though? From a Korean seller? From an American source online? From somewhere else?

In the comments, Jason asked whether I wouldn't want to just buy another computer. He suggested the Mac Mini. Strangely enough, I found myself looking at the Mac Mini while at the Mac Center in Sperm Land today, and saw that it costs almost W700,000. There's no way I can afford that. I can barely afford a train ticket to Pusan and back. I've been wanting a new computer for a while, but that's going to have to wait until next year. For the moment, the best thing to do is shop smart, get a new hard drive, and get back online from my dorm as quickly as possible. As much as I like my office, I'd rather be blogging from the comfort of my own surroundings, snugly wrapped in a thick, warm cloud of fart gas.


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