"Dude."

This was the ominous one-word phrase spoken to me by the Mac Genius (that's what they call them) at the Apple store in Cherry Creek earlier this week when I came to them with my inoperable MacBook.
Roughly translated, "Dude" meant that my hard drive was completely dead and would need to be replaced and that the retrieval of any of my files from the dead hard drive would be costly if not nearly impossible.
Ugh.
But I am back now on my resurrected MacBook with a brand new drive (that I installed all by myself, thank you very much) and feeling a bit of the meaning within Thoreau's call to "Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!" (Rumor has it that his friend and mentor Emerson responded to this by saying, "I think one 'Simplify!' would have been sufficient." I don't know if there's any truth to this, but I really hope so.)
While my computer was down, I found time to empty my DVR of nearly all of the episodes of the Sci-Fi Channel's new take on Flash Gordon. I must say that I've been very impressed. While retaining the spirit of the original strip, the modern update is fresh, funny, and exciting. Eric Johnson is much more than just a pretty face (which he was on Smallville) as the charming Flash. (By the way, how can he be the only "Eric Johnson" in SAG? Isn't that like one of the top ten most common names?)
The Sci-Fi Channel is big on doing marathon re-runs, in fact, it looks like they're doing the whole season split across April 10th and April 30th -- definitely tune in (or program it in or whatever). And, if you've already seen the show, don't spoil it for me. I still have six episodes to go.