I Just Might Wet My Pants With Excitement

The conversation started innocuously enough.

Dan: "I'm thinking we need a larger hard drive to store all our media."

Me: "I thought we had sufficient space scattered across our computers."

Dan: "But we're getting more movies and music and will run out of space soon."

Me: "Why don't you spec it out and see how much it will cost."

Dan: (already running off to his computer) "Okay."

(I had already forgotten this conversation in the next 5 minutes. My mind is like a sieve except it's not like the baking ones you use to sift small particles like powdered sugar or flour. No, it looks more like a drunk trunk driver rammed a Mac truck through it. That's my memory.)

We were sitting down to dinner the next day when Dan mentioned casually that he had bought a "two terabyte hard drive for only $100 dollars" and was blissfully dancing about how happy the computer was going to be to get this awesome add-in. 2 terabytes (TB)? 20 TB would hold the text content of the US Library of Congress. 10 of these babies and we'd be able to store most of modern knowledge encapsulated in written form. Hot-diggity-damn.

When the 2 TB disk arrived, you'd think it was Christmas morning in the Kwan-Chang household. Wowzers! "Can you believe it?" Dan would say, smiling and shaking his head. "2 TB for $100!" I, being the lapsed engineer, was equally excited. 2 TB seems like a heck of a lot of space. Like a bottomless well clamoring to be filled with delightful electronic water. The joy was short-lived, however, when Dan began the process of installing the HD into what he affectionately dubs the "entertainment center". I call it the "computer that holds our music and videos and connects to the TV and projector." TomatO, TomAto.

Long story short, the 2 TB hard drive nearly broke the computer, what with all the formatting, and installing, and porting, and whatcha-ma-call-its to make sure that we didn't lose the existing data. It took Dan almost a week's worth of man hours and a living room strewn with computer parts to configure it properly. The living room/bedroom looked like two computers had entered an Ultimate fighting ring and torn each other to pieces. Very sexy stuff. Every night I came home from work and asked, "Is it working yet?" and Dan would reply, "Yes, but...". Poor guy would fix one problem to have another magically appear, like evil fairies.

The moral of the story is that when your husband turns to you and says, "I'm thinking of getting more computer storage", start cleaning out the living room floor. You're going to need the space.