I am just getting back online after several days of being DOA, computerwise. I came downstairs on Sunday morning to discover an empty black screen with flashing white cursor in the corner. Rebooted, checked cables, and used my phone to search for the cause… the universal diagnosis seemed to be hard drive failure.

Incidentally, what is it about looking for something that makes you lose your mind? Seriously? Around, oh, hour 4 of searching for the driver Cds so I could start the recovery I started having hallucinations, having looked everywhere it could reasonably be- twice. “You know, maybe I put the backup disks in the pantry, it kind of makes sense” or “I could swear I saw them in the freezer awhile back.”

I decided to pull the hard drive out to see if I could at least transfer the data. I was going to have to wait for the replacement driver disks to come, but if I could at least pull the backups…and that’s where the horror show began. One of humiliation and nausea for me, but that’s made many people around me laugh.

Inside the computer was… a slug’s slime trail. Across the motherboard. Over the fan, the power supply, the inner casings. Shiny and gross, it made my heart sink. There was no way this could be good. But still, I had my mission. I got the hard drive out and went to work.

I slaved up the drive to one old computer. Nothing.
I slaved it up to another, more recent computer. Nada.

The drive had ceased to be. It was an ex-storage device. Bereft of life ‘e rests in peace. The backups, the original drive, nothing. Gone.

I schlepped the corpse to ye olde repair shoppe, whose techs laughed their almighty asses off. In front of me, even. They just couldn’t help themselves. They traced the trail, noting that it smootched its way up the outside and into a vent. They called other people over. I know they would’ve done that anyway, but for $75 an hour they could’ve done me the courtesy of waiting til I left, dontcha think? I talked with them 3 times over the course of the day as they updated me on the state of the patient- every time I talked to them, people were laughing in the background. I doubt this is a coincidence, tho I have to say they really did take an interest, even researching slugs to reconstruct the scene of the crime.*

Death by slug.  Only me.

People kept asking me how could this have happened (while they, too, laughed)- as if I keep slugs around the house for entertainment and one got off leash or something. I had no freaking idea how the slug got in my house, or why it would want to be there in the first place.

Until last night, when I discovered that apparently I’m running Club Med for disgusting creatures.

Holy crap.  This is the really nasty part, and I’m going to put it after the jump, just to give you fair warning.

I was understandably in a vengeful mood. Charlie told me he’d bought some slug killer and I should sprinkle some around, kill some of the bastard’s relatives, that kind of thing.So…

this stuff:

caused….THIS (last chance to turn back!):

:::gag:::

Now, I know that the ortho is supposed to attract them, but how far did they travel, really? WTF? This is so disgusting.

 The white goop? Liquified slug guts. And as much as I didn’t even want to think about it, but mid afternoon, it STANK. And Charlie’s away on a business trip, so I got to pull up my big girl panties and go to it. I, being morbidly curious, did a quick count before I started shovelling and got up to 250 before I had to quit.

I’ve finally got the new computer relatively set up and a defensive perimeter around the outside of the house. I can’t imagine there could possibly be more slugs around after that killing field. I’ve more or less adjusted to the roaches, the spiders, and other creepy crawlies. If even more slugs come on the attack tonight, I might really have to reconsider this whole living-in-the-tropics thing.

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*Apparently, slugs and metal don’t get along terribly well, but the coating on the outside of the computer didn’t alert the slug until it was trapped inside, where it raced around (as much as slugs are capable, that is) until it kicked off, its desiccated body found under the motherboard. Apparently there was also a Windows update that required a reboot Saturday night into Sunday morning, and their theory is that the extra current that runs through the machine at startup flash friedeverything. They could try to clean it up and start again, but it would take a minimum of 4 hours, plus parts and they said they were sorry (tho, again, laughing while they said it), unless it was an entirely new set of components they couldn’t guarantee the work, slug snot not being one of the things covered by warranty.