So, I got the name of the nearest Mac store in Madrid and walked there. But they don’t do anything technical, so they sent me 6km away to a small Mac tech shop where two young men put up with my broken Spanish. They ran a test or two, and told me that my drive was shot. (I think it was probably cause by a bad interaction with the PGP software Harvard has guarded my drive with; it sometimes doesn’t like updates to the OS.) Because I’m traveling, I agreed to let them do a complete OS reinstall, wiping out all my data. (I have my current files on DropBox, and have a TimeMachine restore back in the office.) They got right on it, even though they undoubtedly had other jobs in the queue. I went for a lovely 34 minute walk, and came back.

My drive works. I’m restoring what I can off of my mini HD. And the lads charged me $0. Not because of AppleCare, but because they’re nice.

You can find these friendly, helpful, kind people at Univsersomac, Orense, 69 (entrance on General Varela, 38) in Madrid. +34 91 188 88 23.

Say hello for me.