I'm ticked off and heavy-hearted; I just went to turn on my laptop and begin uploading the 600 photographs taken this weekend, as well as, roughly, two hundred from the past month which complimented the recent accumulation with fellow subjects and occasion. These have yet to be backed onto an external hard drive, which I do every two months for my well-being. I received a message telling me there was an error that caused Windows to shut down. The message asked me to choose between safe mode, safe mode with command prompt, last known working configuration, and start windows normally. Start windows normally then. It restarted and brought me directly back to the same caviling screen, black with white text, deriding me with a 30 second count-down and blinking text cursor. After ten tries, I went to call customer services, but my serial has worn from the sticker and all of my notebook materials are in the country house. My second and pis aller, I called Tim four times, then our friend John, as he was following him back to his house for the night and day to enjoy the amenities of home, including the Halo 3 demo. By then I was in tears over the idea of losing my files. Tim assured me that he'll save the files when he comes tomorrow, but I'm still ticked off and heavy-hearted.