As luck would have it, I was caller #9 again today!

Driving home from work today, I managed to catch the Top 7 at 7 on Mix 99.9. Keeping a mental note of the 7 songs, I drove home thinking I’ll give this contest another shot. As the DJ counted down the 7 songs, I slowly started forgetting what the songs were. Nonetheless, when it came time to phone in and answer his question of what was song number 3, I picked up my cell phone and dialed. Busy signal. Redial. Busy signal again. Redial. Busy. Redial. Busy. Redial. Ring… ring… ring…

As the phone was ringing, I thought to myself, wouldn’t I feel more stupid if I managed to be caller #9 and answered the question wrong again?! As the phone was ringing, I thought hard on what sond number 3 was. I started to get all mixed up with the songs and artists that it was all a blur in my mind.

Then it happened:

Hi, who’s this?

This is Taku!

How’s it going, my friend? I’m looking for the number 3 song for tonight.

Number 3, eh?

[As my mind rushed through the possible answers, I finally chose one that I thought might be correct]

Would that be the Goo Goo Dolls?

And what would be the name of the song?

Um…

Can you say, “Stay with you”

Stay with you!

That’s right! Congratulations! For your efforts, you have just won yourself a 4 pack to the Toronto Zoo, and tickets to see Cars!

…

And so the story went.

After giving him my contact information, I continued listening to the radio. Sure enough, after the ads were done, the pre-recorded conversation between myself and the DJ was played on air… edited!

They ever-so-quickly edited some of what I said, and even made it sound as if I knew the artist and the song name in one go!

The tricks of the trade are slowly revealed as I not only didn’t answer the complete question correctly, but still won the prize. Of course, the radio station couldn’t care less who they gave it too.

So there we have it. I was caller #9 twice in one week! Now that is luck if I’ve ever had it. So, going on this luck, I dropped by a convenient store on my way home and bought some lottery tickets. Who knows, right?

If only life were like that!

It’s been a long and arduous week as I have finally come to the acceptance that my primary hard drive is now dead and unrecoverable unless I take it in to a Data Recovery Centre. What made my week even more stressful is the fact that my secondary drive, while it was completely normal and functioning, I had foolishly deleted the partition off of it when installing Windows XP.

Now, when I thought only half of my files were gone, all were vanished within a simple click of a button.

Yesterday, however, I went to a friend’s house to see if he could resolve any of my issues. The utility he used was able to see my data in the secondary hard drive. This was a huge relief, however, as my friend warned, just because I saw it in the utility, it doesn’t mean that it can necessarily be recovered. I guess I’m not completely off the hook until I actually try and recover those missing files. I will have to do this sometime later this week, and will no doubt take some time.

Now that we’re on the road to progression, my friend had mentioned that my hard drive may actually be under warranty still. Seeing as Western Digital offers a 3 year warranty on their hard drives, I still had an inkling of a chance. My heart literally sped up twice as fast as I realized today that I may not need to spend hundreds of dollars on a data recovery service. If I can get WD to diagnose my drive, and fix what is wrong with it, then I may still be able to get my drive back in working condition.

This idea, coupled with the fact that I never heard any clicking noises when my hard drive died, are very promising news for me. My problem may be easily solved with the change of the circuit board on the hard drive. If this is the case, I would be so happy. So happy indeed.

I’ll have to phone them up tomorrow and verify all of this. Until then, I won’t be able to give another sigh of relief. Let’s hope for the best, shall we?!

—

On a happier note, I was out with a friend the other day at Harbourfront. While we were watching a street performer do his final trick, I received a rather pleasant phone call. My friend, who is currently working on a cruise line in the Adriatic Sea phoned me to see how I was doing. It was so nice to hear from her, despite my not being able to talk very long with her. As a sidenote, I really have to get a new phone that has longer battery power! She was phoning from a satellite phone so the reception was actually really good. There was one or two times when we got cut off a little, but besides that, it was a great call. I’m glad that she phoned and next time, hopefully I will be less busy and my phone, fully recharged.

As I was working yesterday, my coworker unexpectedly pops her head up from the cubicle divider and shows me this spread in a magazine and says, “hey, here’s your girlfriend.” The page glamourously displayed Hilary Duff in all her maturity and glory. With her frazzled hair, dark eyes and makeup, she definitely has matured from her pre-teen years. My coworker goes on and says, “here, let me tear the page out for you so you can keep it,” tears the sheet and passes it along with a smirk on her face.

It was a good laugh.

Oddly enough, the same day, I received an email from House of Blues telling me that I could get pre-sale tickets for Hilary Duff’s concert in Toronto this July. I think I’ll pass on this concert, as I will do so reluctantly on Keane’s concert as well.

On another note, my hard drive seems to have failed on me today. I was having intermittent problems with it for the last few weeks as it always failed to recognize upon bootup. When I rebooted, it would work normally again so I never really gave it a second thought.

Today, however, it stopped working altogether no matter what I tried. I can’t imagine what I would have to do if I lost all my data on my primary hard drive. I don’t have backups for most things on it since I don’t even have a DVD writer on my system.

My friend told me to put my hard drive in a ziplock bag and freeze it for a few minutes. Since most hard drive failures are due to overheating, cooling the drive often makes it work again – if anything for a short period of time so that you can back up your vital data. My only problem is, I have a lot of vital information since it was my 160gig drive that bit the dust.

In any case, I will no doubt go shopping for a DVD writer today and possibly a new hard drive soon as well.

So until I get my computer fixed, I may not be able to do much else in the interim.

urgh.