The clueless old woman an the stereotypical black guy are all talkative cliches savvy movie goers know to stay away from. The chatty stoner is an unfamiliar breed of annoying and I figure that since there aren’t that many stoner movies in theaters these days, tokers will be out in force this weekend for Pineapple Express.

I’m not exactly sure where the idea for today’s comic came from except I had a roommate in college who was high almost all of the time and he would not. shut. up! He once came home one night blitzed out of his skull and mumbled the them to Green Acres over and over again. Charming.

I was hoping to see Pineapple Express on Wednesday when it came out, but that was a day after THE GREAT HARD DRIVE CRASH OF ‘ 08 and my mind was a little preoccupied with that. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to enjoy the movie without dealing with that first.

I think I have things sorted out in terms of a plan of action. Sorted out enough that I should be able to see Pineapple Express tonight without being completely distracted.

I’m sending the hard drive off to a data recovery specialist in hopes of getting everything back. Once that’s done, I’m upgrading my system, getting a larger internal hard drive for immediate storage and another back-up external hard drive to save copies of files to.

I’m also looking at external hosting services to keep copies as well as plan on making DVD copies of everything.

I’ve been working with computers for over 15 years and it’s shameful how lax I’ve been about making backups. It’s never really bit me in the ass before now. Sucks I had to learn the hard way.

I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that wrote in with their advice. If you sent me an e-mail and I didn’t reply, it’s not because I didn’t find your input helpful. It’s because I was bombarded with messages and it’s just impossible for me to get back to everyone right now.

Know that I read everyone’s message and I appreciate the time you took to help me with this problem.

The biggest obstacle left now is to pay for the data recovery service. It’s expensive. It can be anywhere between $500 and $2,500. Granted, the high end is for people who lost their data to a flood or fire. But the consultant I talked to estimated that I would be somewhere in the middle.

The problem is, I don’t have the money to cover it right now. So, come Monday, I’m going to launch a Donation Drive – probably in the form of original artwork. You pay a nominal fee and you get original artwork from me.

I felt a little cheesy asking for a handout. If you guys are able to help me at all, I want to give you something in return. But, yeah… look for details on that next week. I’m still making the final tweaks to copy and images I’m going to post on the site until the fund raising goal is met.

I’m also planning on approaching the webcomic news sites and serving myself as an advocate for data management. A sort of “what not to do” story that hopefully other people can learn from.

I find that, in webcomic circles, data management is not a topic that comes up very frequently and it is MISSION CRITICAL when you think about the long-term aspirations of your creative output. You have to back this stuff up. Period. It’s not a question of if a hard drive will fail, but when.

So, yeah. I’m going to try and make myself the spokesperson for that. We’ll see if it gets any traction, maybe bring a few people to the site and, hopefully, contribute to the cause.

That’s it for me today. Thanks again to everyone for their advice and encouragement. It’s done a lot to help me calm down and solve the problem rationally. With a little luck, we’ll be back on our feet in no time!

Have a good weekend, everyone. Take care!