Okay. Here goes. It all started about a year ago, circa February 2004. It was that dreaded time for the freshman in US History to write the coveted 4000 word research paper. Luckilly, I had started right after my professor gave us the assignment. While I was out and about enjoying myself a few weeks before it was due, all of my friends were working on this monster of a paper. I laughed and taunted them for being the procrastinators they were, but I would soon learn the true meaning of Karma.
A few days before the paper was due, I got a nasty virus from kazaa or some keygen site, and several of the system files on my computer became corrupted. It got worse and worse, and I didn't even think to back up my paper on gmail or a dinosaur floppy. Well the day finally came when my computer decided not to boot. I would usually just format the drive and reinstall windows, because you know, clean starts are always nice, but my paper was trapped within the 0's and 1's of my hard drive's plates. Being the Neanderthal I am, and not much of a date recovery specialist, I resorted to turning my machine on and off several times, and banging on the side of my computer out of anger and indignance. The third time is always the charm, and it was. On the third non and off/bang cycle, I just managed to bang my computer while the hard drive was still spinning. (okay okay, maybe it wasnt eactly the third one, it was for effect okay?) I was screwed. It made a weird noise and just as I thought, I killed my hard drive. I thinkI cried. My paper was gone and all of the research and work I had done was wasted. It wasn't even fresh in my memory, so I couldn't even re-type it. But see, that isn't even the climax of my story.
Giving in to my failure and stupidity, I did what no geek likes to do - ask dad for help. I asked him to rescue my paper from the shards of my drive, and after admonishing me and attempting to assert his superior intelligence in the world of computers for what seemed like and eternity, he agreed to help and proceeded to do the most crazy things to get my paper back. Now here's the climax. Ready?
Well, I happen to be a homosexual, and surprise surprise, pops didn't know... yet. If he had known, I would have been dead, being that he's an ASIAN FUNDAMENTALIST BAPTIST IMMIGRANT, believe it or not. Well, like all boys (especially my age), I had a bit of cough cough, pornography on my computer left from kazaa, but not the kind your dad would like to find. Well if you have any kind of deductive reasoning, you would have guessed that he found the stash. Good job, because he did.
Being worried about my paper, I didnt even think of the stuff on my computer. If i had remembered, I would have paid a professional to do it. But it was too late by the time i remembered, and by "time" i mean that time of the night where you tend to remember stuff like that.
My dad had hooked up the drive to his box and used some recovery utility to try and salvage the files. Being the dad with no life that he is, he watched patiently as the dialogue spat out the names of the recoverable files. Well he found the booty alright. About half way through the scan, he began noticing some pretty interesting "document" titles. Upon further investigation, and viewing the first few minutes of opening credits, he found out my big secret. SURPRISE!
He called me over and yelled at me for literally four hours, citing the bible and probably the whole history of mankind. It all boiled down to this, I wasnt allowed to be gay. I feigned innocence, saying friends did it and blah blah blah. Then moved on to curiosity defenses. Nothing worked. I was going to a therapist and that was that. Well for the next few months, everything was torn apart - school was interupted by therapy, fiscal funds were re routed to pay quacks, my life was ruined. Finally during the summer, I was "cured"
, yeah right! shhh, don't tell my dad.
Because of kazza and viruses and human stupidity and technology and moving parts and centripetal acceleration i was outed. Outed to non other than my father. All this for a lost file. All this for a history class. All this in the name of technology and in the name of a problem that has plagued geeks since the creation of the computer - data loss. A data problem was to blame for my bouts of therapy and for a time in my life I'd really like to forget. I was a martyr for data loss.
Oh, and did I ever get the paper you ask? The answer is no. The paper ended up being in a "bad sector" so my dad says. Maybe he was just lying to punish me.
Moral of the story: no matter how old and obsolete floppy disks are, they're still good for something, back up everything, homosexuality cannot be cured, data loss can ruin lives, never ask your dad for help with anything, norton anti virus is a must, don't download bad stuff unless you want to risk getting caught, don't waste your money on therapists, if your'e gay and someone just can't accept it, feign being cured, if your confused about someone's sexuality, check their my shared folder, hard drives are pansies, they don't like being hit, restarting doesn't always work, nothing is too personal to share if it involves a chance to win a 2GB flash drive (j'adore USB!). For all other morals, please contact me.
