Yeah, you're right Laura.  It's very common error like this.

Nowadays just with networking and servers, as a said, but before it, I worked more than 3~4 years just support for simple clients and small companies and I can see many "crazy" errors like that you said.  It's really common also, "dummies" users don't have one partition just for your data, don't use firewall and Anti-virus updater or don't take care with your laptops...(you know, is more easy laptop's hard drive crash or have some typical errors than desktop...).

I see some "screenshot" of  OSX 10.7, it's beauty OS. It's common in here (Brazil) designers and engineers like to use Apple-OS. Interesting, no? :) 

The market share in Huntsville is good for I.T? There are many companies that work with I.T support ?

I understand. Almost always is user error in some OS too, mainly in Linux OS, people used to Microsoft Windows and think that all OS is same stuff. Big mistake.

CentOS is a Red Hat Enterprise Linux Derivation, it's really stable, but the Red Hat Linux, you have to pay licences (expensive) and CentOS no. CentOS and Red Hat is really common on WebServers, servers virtualization and Internet provider.

Well, I use Fedora 14 in my laptop and some other kind (Debian and CentOS) in Vmware to create server projects.

I've never used/worked with Apple Tech. I've heard that is stable hardware, isn't ?