Venting: computer junk, and car crash

So my Mac is still not fixed?!?! I set up an appointment with a genius at the Mac store last Friday.. Drug cal up there, and talked to a really nice man who spent lots of time running diagnostics and doing other tests to find out what was going on... And he couldn't figure it out and blamed it on my old hard drive, he recommended I back everything up and come back and he would install a new hard drive. I quote him when he said, "I won't charge any labor to do it, because it is so simple to do, it will only take me a few minutes."

Well I left feeling pretty decent. Backing up my computer was a challenge when I could not drag/drop anything and my time machine kept getting errors. But I finally got it to work. Went back to the apple store on Monday aka the busiest day ever thanks to presidents day, waited for 45 mins.. For the guy to tell me they didn't have the hard drive I wanted. He suggested I go to simply Mac because they would have even bigger hard drives for the same price, if not cheaper.

That was basically a waste of time, and gas.

So this morning I waited eagerly for cal to wake up from his morning nap, and we headed out to simply Mac. On our way out of the neighborhood, we were behind a big recycling truck. The light turned green so we could make our right hand turn.. And before I knew it, the huge truck's back up beeper was going off, and the truck was backing towards us! (luckily, I wasn't following close, or we'd be in even bigger trouble) I threw my car into reverse and started pounding on my horn. I turned to check if there was someone behind me.. And SMASH! There was a dumpster on my hood.

Seriously? Who backs up in the middle of an intersection during a green light!?

By now the light was red and we are chilling there in the middle of the intersection. We pull over and to make a long story short, the police came... The dirty bearded driver used his walkie talkie to inform his coworkers that he had 'run over a pretty little girl', and they responded with, 'I hope you got to give her mouth to mouth', all while cal is restless from sitting in the car waiting for so long, and my poor car looks like trash, and the guy's dumpster didn't even have a scratch on it. O, and Calvin will not be bragging to all his 'baby friends' that he 'survived his first car accident', like dirty bearded man told him to.

So we get back on our way to simply Mac, hoping a fixed computer will fix my day. Then the kid informs me that the 320 gb hard drive was $130, and the labor cost was $120! Ha! I told him that's crazy, I had googled it and could replace it myself in a matter of minutes. 'sorry, that's just our policy here.. Blah blah blah. I wasn't really listening at that point because I was trying not to cry, or hit something.

So much for running a few quick errands and spending the rest of the day studying for the the NCLEX.

now i get to call insurance companies, and research and order a hard drive, and study.

Know anyone with experience switching out hard drives on a 2008 MacBook?

**update: I fixed my computer on my own! I used the disks they give you with your Mac to erase and reinstall my operating system, and things are working again... Got the idea from my mom- the genius of all apple geniuses. Ha! Now I will try and get a few updates on here tonight since I am about studied out for the evening.