This summer I was overconfident about my multi-tasking capabilities. Stupid. Careless (oopsie). Hypocritical. "Save regularly, backup often," I repeatedly tell my students. Practice what you preach, Dr. Simpson. Somehow I managed to make my faithful MacBook Pro inaccessible and inoperable. In addition I created considerable havoc and access confusion on its backup hard drive. Duh. Ouch.
I tried to no avail offering sacrifices to the computer gods and appealing to their intervention.
After many days and considerable expense experimenting with trial versions of data repair and data recovery software I called a well-known tech support recommended by Robin.
In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have kicked her off the couch before I asked Dogbert for help.
I believe that I have recovered all the apps and succesfully transferred them to my new MacBook Pro. Of course within a month after I purchased my replacement laptop a new MacBook Pro was released and the new Mountain Lion operating system became available (for which many of my apps need to be upgraded).
Over the rest of the semester I hope to revisit each of the 200 apps I have (re)installed. Why do I have so many? How many of them do I regularly use? Which are critical to my success as a teacher, as a learner, and as a consultant? Which are more than "Mac Gems" or POPULAR technology tools? Which has demonstrated their value acoss the years? Which can be retired before I retire? Stay tuned.