Knuckledragger

Ugh. Last night I shut down my 13" MBP and headed to the radio station. More observant HCers will note I didn't post in the broadcast thread. When I got to the station, the MBP would not boot up. I hit the power button, the screen lit up, the Apple logo appeared, the spinning "gear" showed up with a linear progress bar below it and 15 seconds later the machine powered down. As it turned out, I had a guest DJ (the first one in years) on my show and he was spinning an all vinyl set. I got him set up and spent the next hour in the station's production studio using the fax line to call Apple Care tech support. The tech walked me through a number of steps and we determined that the MBP's HDD was corrupted and not repairable. I scheduled a callback for this morning and the tech helped me format the drive and re-install OSX. I could probably have done this without the help of the tech, but since I paid for AppleCare, I'm damn well gonna use it. There was one major wrinkle: with 10.7 and 10.8 there is no install media, all installs are done through the $%&# Apple App Store. I couldn't remember my password (I've changed it several times recently and I've started using 1Pasword.) The end result was that I re-installed from the image on my Time Machine drive. I would have preferred to do a fresh 10.8 install and then copied my personal data over from the TM. All of this would only be a minor headache, buuut... as I have mentioned elsewhere, I'm Djing for 5 hours on Friday at RISE, the most exclusive club in Boston. I can NOT have my laptop fail during that gig. A friend of mine with a decade of OSX experience is suggesting I buy an external FW drive (like a LaCie 2.5" "ruggedized" model) and making it bootable. I'm considering that, but there's the added issue of Traktor (the DJ software I use) needing to be re-activated every time hardware changes, and it might object to being activated on both the int'l drive and the LaCie. I need a system I can rely on with as few complications as possible. Maybe I should take a cue from my vinyl-spinning friend.

Flashback from four years ago:

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October is breast cancer awareness month.

That's a take on the Redditor's Wife meme.

My Bloody Valentine - Loveless. Trying to ascertain what all the fuss is about.

Vintage Case.

Thanks for congratulations, guys. I'm kinda pissing my pants about this gig. As far as MA (and the rest of New England) goes, RISE is the Big. Time. I've got the lounge to myself for 5 hours. I need to start woodshedding right now to put together a mix for it.