A Nothing Trail of Silences

You know what I could really use right now?* Computer trouble.

I am attempting to take advantage of my friends' knowledge! I ran a standard permissions repair and a disk verification on my computer. Disk verification failed and shouted at me in angry red letters.

Invalid volume file count
Invalid volume directory count

The volume Macintosh HD needs to be repaired

Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed

I don't suppose anyone has any suggestions? Other than 'choose between bread/lettuce and computers?' I am so hoping that I am not pooched.

* (It's not like I'm already concerned I may have started stress-vomiting or anything.)

AHHHHHH, why aren't any of my external hard drives loading?

A very happy (and similarly, very belated birthday) to two of my most favourite people on the internet -- thefourthvine and tellitslant!

Things which are awesome: for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I obtained funding for a laptop, and am now the proud owner of a Toshiba M750 tablet! I can write on the screen! I have never owned a PC before, though, so am curious as to what applications my more experienced friends think are necessary. Now, this is going to be a school machine -- I'm planning on keeping all my media on my desktop computer, so I don't need recommendations for vidding software or anything of the like. Neat or useful program recommendations would be awesome, as well as resources. If anyone uses a good reference/paper database program, I would love to hear it. Unfortunately, Papers (which is awesome), only has a Mac version.


And, somewhat belatedly:

( Dear Yuletide Author: while I am clearly made of fail for not getting this up sooner... )