Cozy Chick or Dumb Cluck?
Forgive the recycled post. If you follow the Good Girls Blog you’ve already had to put up with me whining and (probably worse) philosophizing about my latest disaster. Here’s my tale of woe: Friday afternoon I’m finishing up a novella — that is coincidentally DUE that evening — and four lines to go — I mean, literally FOUR lines to go — my computer crashes.
Blue screen, large white font spelling disaster in no uncertain terms and in type large enough to be suitable for reading by idiots. And of course I have a moment of panic where my heart starts pounding and sweat breaks out on my forehead and I envision a future laid to waste by nuclear weapons…and then I calm myself down and reboot, reminding myself that it’s probably okay because this has happened twice before in the history of this particular laptop, and it’s always been okay…
Please God…please please please…
And, Lo! Yes my system comes back up…and promptly crashes again…and again and again and again. I can’t get it back. Once I get all the way to the desktop and I see that my files are sitting there…maybe they’re okay because this is a good sign that I can get to my desktop, right?
But the computer continues to crash. I try rebooting in safe mode, I try setting a system restore point, I try going in as another user. No. No. NO.
I have a flash drive. In fact, I have two flash drives and an external floppy drive, courtesy of Mr. Thrilling, but it’s a week since I used them. A week and several thousand words on three different projects later.
And that is a lot of time and a lot of words.
And as I sit here typing at my sister’s house on my sister’s PC, I am wondering…why?
Not: why me, not why did my laptop crash, but why was I so stupid as to not back everything up? It’s not like I haven’t heard the horror stories — or believed them — it’s not like I didn’t realize ahead of time what a disaster this would be — I’m both imaginative and fearful, I knew this would be just as bad as it is — so why did I take that risk?
And since I am now at the philosophical stage of waiting on my rooftop for the men in row boats to come and rescue me, I wonder why all of us take these stupid little pointless risks day in and day out?
I’m pretty sure it’s not just me.
I mean, I understand the taking of big risks, the calculated, putting-all-my-money-on-lucky-number-seven gambles. That’s part of being alive, isn’t it?
But the stupid, pointless risks — the running of red lights when there’s nothing really at stake. No one’s giving birth in the back of the SUV, no one’s being transported to safety, foreign spies are not in pursuit…so why do we all take these little chances?
By the way, running red — or even amber — lights is not one of my little bad habitual risk-takings, but gambling with the entire body of my written word (my work place, in other words) apparently is.
And what is up with that? Why do we do it? Why do we take little chances with the things that have huge consequences? Why do we — humans, I mean, not me in particular — engage in everything from unprotected sex to under-insured homes? Even when we’re old enough to know better?
Oh, while I’m thinking of it, go back up your computer — and go get a Tetanus shot. You’re probably way overdue.
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LATEST UPDATE ON MY COMPUTER WOES — eminent hard drive failure.
Luckily — and this really was the most important thing — the Geek Squad geek was able to save all my files and folders (he even saved my Favorites stuff) onto our external hard drive. So now I’m computer shopping. But that’s a lot easier than trying to recover a week’s worth of lost writing — not to mention all those files and folders of old stuff that I hadn’t bothered backing up at all because…because….
