Sunday, July 29, 2012

Not enough vodka in the world...

My computer died today.


Thankfully, she went quickly and peacefully in her sleep. She didn't suff....well, she mostly didn't suffer. She got broken last year on my cruise (Thanks a lot, Carnival!), but it was my own fault for trusting those morons with my precious electronics. She's been limping along ever since. A few months back, the power button stopped working. I got worried at first because I didn't know how I was going to hard reset my computer when I needed to, but I learned (by accident) that closing the lid and reopening it would work.

Unfortunately, when she got broken on the cruise, it was the lid that broke. Right by the power switch. And so I've been babying her along praying she didn't die, gingerly closing her and gently opening her back up. Hubby told me I could have his laptop since he can use his work laptop for personal use, but that his doesn't have MS Word and as a writer, that's pretty much a must for me. Hence the reason I've been babying Big Red for so long. The thought of buying a $150 program didn't appeal much to me.

Well that and I don't like change.

I would've liked a slow transition. Backing up bookmarks on a dozen different flash and hard drives. Printed them out. Sent them to myself. Same with iTunes playlists and all that.

I am fortunate, though, the hard drive wasn't fried, so my son and his father were able to get the files off the HD and transfer them to my external drive so I can put them on the new computer. I'm hoping my bookmarks and playlists will transfer too. If not, I suppose it's not the end of the world, but I cringe at the research that I have in those bookmarks. I'll probably never get them all back if I need them.

Really, in the grand scheme of things I didn't lose much (I don't think) except the license for Word and a few days of work that I can't get back, but there for a minute, there wasn't enough vodka in the world to calm my nerves.

So let this serve as a reminder to do a backup ALL THE TIME. Online versions are best (DropBox, Backblaze, etc) because they automatically sync without you having to remember anything, but at the very least invest in a $40 portable HD so you can back up your photos, docs, music and videos. I promise you won't regret it.

Now, if anybody needs me, I'll be over in the corner rocking back and forth until I get back to where I was a few days ago.

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