iPod FireWire near-iMeltdown

Yesterday I saw my blog, and much of my recent freelance work, flash before my eyes. My housemate got this iPod for Christmas and since neither of us has a Mac she bought a FireWire card and asked me if she could install it on my computer since mine is newer and I have XP. Unfortunately not only did it not work but I could only run my computer in Safe mode after that. I left her yesterday afternoon trying to figure it out when I headed out to the movies.

When I came back around 7 pm, she'd pulled out the FireWire card and uninstalled the software, but my computer was still unusable. Dell support told her to reinstall the operating system, which thankfully she didn't do. I thought of all the downloaded software I have, including Radio Userland, plus all the stuff I'd have to back up and... Well, I was having a quite nice time last night making dinner with my date so I just put it completely out of mind until today.

In the movie I saw last night, "In America," which I sorta enjoyed but somehow just couldn't get absorbed in, there's a young girl who uses up each of her three wishes just when she needs them. This morning when I woke up I made one of those wishes: Please let my computer work! It's my livelihood. Plus it would be a royal pain in the butt to try to backup and reinstall everything. On the first startup this morning I got the same blue screen with error messages. So I shut everything down and pulled off all the wires and opened up my Dell system, pushed at all the cable connections to be sure they were tight, and closed it up again. Et voila - success! I think one of the cables did push in tighter, so maybe it had been jostled loose.

At any rate, we didn't re-try installing the FireWire card. I was a little too freaked out by my near-computer-death experience to push my luck. I think she's shipping the iPod back to her ex (who gave it to her) and having him load up some music for her and send it back. Phe-ew.

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