Last week I made a grumpy post, containing a litany of complaints about a bunch of stuff that all went wrong in a short span of time. Now it appears that some cosmic balance is being achieved, at least in my corner of the universe.

The data recovery for my broken hard drive was going to cost $1500. Too rich for my blood! I got the impression they’re used to dealing with large companies (as opposed to sorry individuals like me), who don’t even blink at that kind of number. So I got my broken hard drive back, and in the box were two DVDs with all my data. I went online and checked my credit card balance, and they haven’t charged me (I had given them my credit card number for the initial $100 evaluation fee, which they haven’t charged me for either). So it looks like the rep I was working with took pity on me. So he gets a very big THANK YOU! I will preserve his job security by not mentioning his name or his company’s name.

Soon the new hard drive will arrive for my laptop, and I can start getting things back in order. One thing that will be different is this: I will back up my data. I will back up my data. I will back up my data.

This means I can finish my Japan travelogue, complete with pictures. For now I won’t backdate the entries, so they won’t get buried in the blog history. I’ll put the original date in the text. I just posted one new entry, and next week I’ll make the entries for the last few days of the trip.