Aw, man. It really is jarring to lose your computer like that. When it happened to me last summer (in the middle of beta'ing a bigbang, no less), all the shops told me they'd fix it... in exchange for all my rent money. ...It was actually tempting.

What worked better was, I put up an ad on craigslist, got tons of calls and met this genious lady who does computer repair out of her house in between practicing hardcore Tae Kwon Do and raising two small children (and a number of pet reptiles). No joke. This woman exists, and she saved my hard-drive for under 20 bucks. Maybe Texas has one of those?