I have a five year-old HP computer. It runs XP and it runs very well, thank you.

Woops. I had a computer. Past tense.

Though it ran long and well, and only crapped out while playing Alpha Centauri, my favorite game, I felt that it had slowed down over the years. No telling what was in there, gumming up the works -- viruses, worms, clams, spyware, spudware, cookies, gummybears and other mean and nasty stuff.

A brand new Office Depot had just opened up on NASA Road 1, and I noticed they had a banner out front, saying "FREE PC CHECKUP!". That sounded like exactly what I needed. I called for the details, and sure enough, the checkup itself was at no cost, and was intended to find and clean up all those mean and nasty things. Upgrades, reconfigs, and improved security cost extra, of course. Most importantly, no data would be injured during the making of this checkup.

I delivered my beloved PC into the hands of the computer shepherd on a balmy Saturday afternoon.

I called Sunday afternoon and was told my PC was clean as a whistle! No bug-uglies had infested my OS and my data was uncontaminated.

When I arrived to pick it up, I asked for a new mouse, as my one at home was operating erratically and no amount of cleaning seemed to help. Asking for a new mouse is not a big request. Just a mouse. Only, wait... my PC used a round plug for the mouse cable. All modern mouses (?) use USB plugs.

Okay, said the 20-something, clean-cut, college student employee at Office Depot. I'll just download a new mouse driver. This will only take a minute.

After 45 minutes, I went up to him and asked what the matter was. He said that he was having trouble rebooting my PC. There was just a detectable trace of whimper in his voice. Another 15 minutes went by, with him pounding the keyboard, staring at the screen, and showing increasing signs of panic.

I said, Doc, your time's up. Unplug my machine and help me out to the van with it. I'm taking it home.

The next evening, I plugged it all together (still using the old erratic mouse) and turned it on. Got several error messages telling me that certain application modules were missing. I closed those dialog boxes and fired up Alpha Centauri. It worked just fine.

The next evening, decided to work on an essay I had started some months ago. It wasn't there. I opened up the "My Documents" folder.

It was empty. There weren't even any dustbunnies or cobwebs. It was totally, absolutely empty.

I did a search for words that I used frequently in my document titles, and within their contents. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I did a search in the backup drive for the string "the". Any "the" at all. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.

I opened up a Word blank document. Word wouldn't open without the serial number printed on the original installation disk lable. Ditto Excel. Ditto Canvas. Ditto every paid-for application. All that was left was Notespad (freeware) and the coupla dozen text files saved in the same folder as the application.

And then I became angry.
Very angry.
White knuckled angry.
Throwing food across the room angry.
Volcanic eruption angry.
F-5 tornado angry.
Marzipanal angry.
Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator angry.

Those sumbitches at Office Depot had wiped my hard drives.

On the phone, the technician turned me over to the store manager, we talked, and he turned me over to the technical manager, we talked, and the following weekend, I took my PC back into the store. The final analysis, performed remotely from their headquarters laboratory, was that no trace of any document in "My Documents" could be found. Not only were they erased from the OS table of contents, they had been physically zero-overwritten on the hard drives. Nothing could be salvaged.

I asked them how this could have happened. They apologized and said they didn't have a clue.

I told my wife. Gwen got angry, only she went straight to Illudium Pu-36 Explosive Space Modulator angry without all that futzing about. She wanted to know how much had been lost. The pictures of her family. The pictures of our house. The pictures of our honeymoon.

I have backups of nearly everything, I said -- except maybe the house. I couldn't remember when I had done the last backup. Last Spring? Last year?

But where are the backups? We've moved the computer and all the bookshelves and all the files and boxes at least twice since last Spring while we painted rooms. They're probably in the garage. Probably. There's just two or three dozen sealed plastic storage bins out there. Stacked four deep. Probably.

They are probably in the garage. I am most definitely in the dog house.

I just got off the phone with Office Depot. They are offering me the full Microsoft Office Professional 2007 as "payment" for their error. That's something. But it won't replace whatever family pictures we took after the last backup. And the essays.

I accepted their offer. I'll pick up my PC tonight, with the new Office installed and checked.

Oh! And it will have a new mouse. A modern laser mouse with USB cable.

And a goddam $2 USB to PS2 cable adaptor that fits into my PC's old-fashioned mouse socket.