Well, that's it. The unthinkable has happened. Sometime last night, partly due to my own error and partly due to factors beyond my control, I have lost both my ipod and about 60% of my music. My old ipod ceased to function properly the other day, and in attempting to repair it, the catalogue of my external firewire drive was corrupted. All data on the drive was lost.

The ipod is now a paperweight.

What makes the bands of my ribs constrict and tighten around my heart, however, is the fact that if I had just followed proper procedure, which I knew and understood, if I had disconnected all my drives before trying to reformat the ipod, all my data would be still here. Laziness and overconfidence hoist me too high, until I was hanged by them.

However. I remind myself that there are far worse things to lose than songs, even 3000 songs, and a sense of humor is one of those things. So to the raving madman of technology, that dealer in rifles and smallpox blankets who gives us both power and the means of our undoing, I say: "Lay on, Macduff, and damn'd be him that first cries, 'Hold, enough!' " [Exeunt, fighting.]