The Bad: taps for my laptop

So naturally today after taking the kitties to the vet, I moved my laptop to the coffeee shop to work on job hunt stuff. When I turned it on, I got a scrambled screen, and then was booted into a safe mode which didn't fit on the screen, and then got the notice "Multiple Drive Partition Error". And then got nothing- noteven a blue screen, just a dimly lit screen.

So far, the advice I've received has been in the line of "there's services that can recover your data". which doesn't make me feel at all optimistic. Tomorrow I check to see if the slab is still under extended warranty, or if I've got a fancy doorstop.