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the stages of loss

My new laptop (the Sony VAIO) is only a couple of months old; all my other PCs are far older, so I was completely unprepared when it started to have problems. First, the tech support person was in denial. "You cannot be having a hardware problem. It is very likely a software problem you are having". Then I was bargaining with him to open the ticket anyway. Then I was angry that he dared argue with me at all - was he here experiencing the problem for himself? He was just giving me crap because I'm female. Despair set in as I frantically copied over all my files from the laptop to my development PC just minutes before it would boot no more. I finally brought it to the good folks over at CompUSA, who looked at my little VAIO, heard the loud grinding and clicking noises for themselves, and marveled that I'd been able to salvage all my data before the hard drive finally died. I told the technician that it sounded remarkably like the Iomega Zip drive "click of death" problem... and he agreed. At last, acceptance... It's supposed to be back from the shop in a couple of weeks. I can cope with my grief until then...