Keith Olbermann crashed my hard drive...

...and Anderson Cooper helped.

It figures: the men I love always wreak havoc, in some form or fashion.

This time, it was my laptop's hard drive. More specifically, it was the error message I received about 3 weeks ago warning me (and I exaggerate not one iota) "Critical error: you have 15MB of free space available on your C:/ drive." Not gigabytes, mind you...megabytes. I knew things had been running rather slow lately, but damn...I was NOT prepared for that harsh reality.

WTF?!?

Naturally, being the techno-savvy uber geek that I am, I proceeded to clean the drive and compress old files. I removed unused programs and even purged some that I like and wanted to keep but wouldn't be able to reinstall due to loaning or losing the installation disc. The latter was painful (oh, Photoshop, I love you so) but it seemed necessary at the time.

But it wasn't enough. I had not made the slightest dent. I merely freed up less than a gig, which, for a chronic podcast addict, would last maybe three days.

Drastic times call for drastic measures: I began purging my iTunes library.

Cringe.

There are few things more precious to me than my tunes. I will easily sacrifice fairweather friends before I will part with my beloved collection of mp3s. This either speaks volumes about my electic musical taste or explains my rapidly shrinking coterie. Whatever the verdict, je suis un belle dame sans regret. I am nothing if not loyal to the things I love.

So after making backup CDs, I dumped and deleted and purged.

Then I pouted. It hadn't worked. My current savings would not afford me a new MacBook Pro in time. A crash was surely imminent. I was not devastated, but I certainly was not pleased.

I finally bit the bullet and dumped my podcast library. Gone was the inaugural Countdown with Keith Olbermann podcast from May - the first one to be podcasted in its entirety instead of just the top story. Gone, too, was the particularly enjoyable episode where Keith chats with my ultimate Hollywood heartthrob, John Cusack.

Click. Delete. Gone.

I didn't even bother making backups of those.

Fast-forward to last night, when I mentioned to a dear friend that I wanted to email him a podcasted video. It got me wondering how I could attach said item in an email, so I sleuthed around in my saved files.

In my damn iTunes folder.

Where I found a folder labeled Podcasts.

Which was full.

We're talkin' THIRTY FUCKING GIGS WORTH OF FULL! The prime culprits? Cooper and Olbermann. And a hefty dose of CNN Headline News. And multiple gigs of NPR's All Songs Considered live concerts. And every damn animated New Yorker Cartoon that's ever been created. Holy hard drives, Batman!

Apparently, every time I've watched or heard a podcast then deleted it, my laptop has simply become an electronic extension of myself and in true packrat fashion, kept 'em all. Every last one of 'em.

Damn. I should have looked there first. So now what am I going to do with all this money I've been saving for a new Mac?

Can we say "iTunes shopping spree?" I thought so.

But first, I reeeeally need a drink...