I sent my HP laptop to the shop to get the keyboard and battery issue fixed. I asked about reformatting the hard drive, since I know that the knee-jerk reaction of all techs when faced with a laptop that doesn’t work right is to reformat—sorry, re-image—the hard drive. Last time, my problem was the laptop screen, which had developed half a dozen pixel-wide vertical lines in the display. This time, random keys were not responding to being depressed, and my battery died. Cool note on the extended warranty: Apparently, when you purchase the HP extended warranty, it also covers the battery (and woo-hoo! for that).

Before I sent in the laptop, I did a full HD backup. And then I wrote a note and taped it to my computer. It said, roughly, “The keyboard is not working properly and the battery is dead. Do not reformat the hard drive without calling me first!!” and then listed my phone number.

I checked on my computer repair online today, and found this under “Current status:”

Hewlett-Packard is currently trying to get in touch with you regarding the current status of your order. If we have been unable to reach you, please call us at the customer service phone number listed in the Contact HP section at your earliest convenience.

I called. The nice gentleman at HP asked what he could do for me. I told him that HP had told me to call them about my laptop repair, and that if they wanted to reformat my HD, the answer was absolutely not.

Guess what they wanted to do?

Yep. Reformat the hard drive.

I knew it. I asked if I could take the HD out this time, but the person I spoke to said they might not repair it without the HD available. I knew I was right to tape that note to my laptop.

I’m not a tech, but I can do a hell of a lot of work on my own computer. I’ve added RAM and various hardware to my laptops and desktops in the past. I can troubleshoot my own system with the aids provided by the manufacturer, and sometimes with a little help from my friend (hi, Jay from NJ). I think the problem here is that the computer repair system is utterly skewed toward those who don’t know anything about computers. While I think that’s the right thing to do, I think computer repair departments also need to have a little box on the form you can check that says, “Yes, I know what I’m doing, so leave my HD alone.”

What is it with techs and their insistence on destroying your data to “fix” your computer?

Feh. It’s not a virus. It’s a hardware issue. Hands off my HD, tech boys.

Say, remember the dog-and-pony show that academics and other anti-Israel “experts” trotted out when Ahmadinejad said that Israel would be wiped off the map?

Whatever this quotation from a decades-old speech of Khomeini may have meant, Ahmadinejad did not say that “Israel must be wiped off the map” with the implication that phrase has of Nazi-style extermination of a people. He said that the occupation regime over Jerusalem must be erased from the page of time.

Now Ahmadinejad has managed to call for Israel’s destruction in no uncertain terms.

But Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took a hard line against Israel, calling it “an invader” and saying it “cannot continue its life.”

Unless you think “cannot continue its life” isn’t actually, you know, calling for the end of Israel.

It sure looks to me like that’s calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. But then, what do I know? I don’t have a Ph.D., I don’t understand Farsi, and I don’t get op-eds in major newspapers. But I think that this sort of talk means that Amhadinejad is calling for a Nazi-style extermination of a people.

However, his hard-line rhetoric resurfaced when Ahmadinejad said Israel “cannot continue its life.”

“Israel is an invader and is cruel, and it hasn’t got a united public. All other nations are against it,” he said. “We do not recognize them. They are attackers and illegal.”

Yeah, sounds fairly reminiscent of calls in the 1930s for the end of world Jewry.