The worst possible outcome

The capacitors on the motherboard are blown. In turn, this blew the hard drive -- at least that is my non-IT interpretation of what they told me. The last hope to salvage anything is "ghosting" the hard drive. This is currently underway; we hope to know more on Monday afternoon. There are only a few other times in my life when I have felt such a personal loss. It is indescribable.

On a more positive note, Uncle Gordie and Sarah helped me pick out a new CPU tower last night online. It will arrive on Tuesday so I can move on.... In the meantime, I'm losing a lot of sleep and spending Internet time at Will's office.