So?
I pulled a spare USB drive off the shelf and restarted the computer.
My home account lives on an external drive.
I then went into a guest account.
I then renamed the external drive to be the same name as my original, now hosed drive.
Then I opened up the Time Machine application.
I then copied my home directory back to the location it should be on the external drive.
Hot damn, it worked!
I've bought into Tape, exabyte, TK-45, Jazz, Zip, etc... all of these technologies have failed me.
Most excellent :)