It is Chinese Zodiac Year of the Dead Computer.

[snarp]

I know because my computer is dead.

This means that EVERY PERSON IN THIS FAMILY’S COMPUTER HAS DIED WITHIN THE PAST THREE MONTHS. So maybe it’s the Three-Month Period of the Dead Computer. I guess I shouldn’t have brought the Chinese Zodiac into it; I apologize; the lunar calendar is clearly in no way responsible for the condition of these computers. More likely the problem relates to voodoo.

I have double-backups of everything because I’ve been obsessive about that recently - my last manual backup was the 27th, and I just checked and my Carbonite seems to have been working fine. I’m pretty sure that some kanji flashcards and MP3s are the only thing neither of them would have caught, and the MP3s are on my phone’s SD card. THANK GOD I AM ANAL-RETENTIVE.

What happened: I was drinking water, and brilliantly spilled a couple drops on the computer. I didn’t see any get into the keyboard, but some might have, so I shut it down, unplugged it, took the battery out, and left it alone for five hours or so.

In retrospect, I obviously should have just unplugged it and taken the battery out immediately, not let it go through normal shut-down - that was idiotic. It turned on, and both my user profiles were still there, but when I logged in all my settings and files were gone, except (for some insane reason) for the stuff in the Recycle Bin. When I saw this, I shut it down again - I’m going to let it sit all night before I mess with it again.

(Crossposted to SarahPin.com, Dreamwidth, and LiveJournal. You can leave comments at whichever.)