Always back stuff up

My iBook G4, trusty companion through several Blitzes, two National Novel Writing Months, a layoff, a bunch of articles and whole heck of a lot of blogging, has died a horrible, flaming death.

Well...no actual flames were involved.

I was three-quarters awake this morning when I heard The Child ask The Wife, "Mommy, what's that noise from downstairs?" That alarmed me. I went down, and the iBook was making an incredibly loud metallic grinding from the general area of the hard drive.

It is dead.

My iTunes library was on the machine...no backup. My Perforce server was on the machine...no backup (fortunately, my ThinkPad was synced). Everything I wrote prior to buying the ThinkPad...no backup. All my source code...no backup. Even stage.tex is gone.

I can't even say I've learned a lesson, because this isn't the first time I've had my ass handed to me because I didn't back up. Sigh.

And now I need a new computer. When you're just goofing around, it's fun. When you need to replace a machine quickly, it becomes work. Sigh.