Starting over

On Wednesday, my computer crashed. From what I could tell by searching online (with my iPod) and doing what troubleshooting it recommended, either the hard drive or the cable connecting to it is done. Rather than spend a lot of time trying to see which--or taking it to someone who would know better than I--I bought an external hard drive. For the first time in my life, I got something other than standard shipping. I went with overnight. However, I missed the delivery yesterday, so I didn't get it until today (thanks very much, Spanish oral final). So now I'm going to be spending much of this afternoon and evening getting back to something resembling my old computer. Currently, we're about a quarter of the way through an Apple software update.