Evanesco!
November 03, 2008, 12:42 AM
About two weeks ago, my computer died. Suddenly, the blue screen of death popped up, and attempts to reboot literally resulted in nothing, just… blackness. It wasn’t even all that old, just very… well used. The friendly guy at the shop told me I had fried my hard drive (with some beans and a nice Chianti) and that my computer was indeed stone cold dead. And it wasn’t just the hardware that was deceased; everything on it was gone too. And I mean everything. And I mean gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Lost to the world.
I know, I know! I should make back-ups. And I do! For important stuff, anyway, like a thesis or years of carefully gathered scientific data. All of that diligently went onto the university network as well as my hard drive, and I kept hard copies of it, too. But my home computer… it’s not exactly as if I kept any state secrets on it, or the top secret drafts for the eighth Harry Potter book. All I had on my home computer were some hobbies – little projects for my own entertainment. That’s not all that important, is it? I never even thought of backing those up.
Well, I will from now on. Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? Fortunately I am quite compulsive about sharing everything I have ever produced with multiple people, so I was able to retrieve a lot of the things that I actually finished and shared.
- Every single picture I ever owned I either got from someone or sent to someone – I can get those back.
- Everything I ever created and finished – songs, stories, essays, 3D drawings – someone somewhere must have a copy, I’m sure I can find those again.
- Music I bought? – yeah it sucks that I spent money on it, but it can be bought again. I could re-download all my backing tracks I got from www.karaoke-version.com for free and the nice people of www.musicalcreations.com were so kind as to re-send me the backing tracks I bought from them when I explained the problem.
But, as you may have gathered from my previous blogs, I’m not the kind of person who starts one project, finishes it, and then starts the next. I have… correction; I had so many unfinished projects! And they got wiped. Erased. Vanished. Quicker than the flick of a wand.
Two nearly finished short stories?
Evanesco!
Detailed plot outline and research for a novel?
Evanesco!
Half-finished lyrics for at least half a dozen filks?
Evanesco!
Trial versions for the harmonies for at least half a dozen songs?
Evanesco!
Nearly finished cool CAPSLOCK Harry filk to Britney song that only needed a few more harmonies?
Evanesco!
THAT REALLY COOL A CAPELLA FILK I WAS WORKING ON BUT GOT STUCK ON THAT I TOLD YOU ABOUT LAST TIME?
Eva-bloody-nesco!
Gone. All gone. Irretrievable. Just… gone.
*sigh*
Well. I have a lovely, shiny new laptop now. It’s orange. It’s clean. It’s got oceans of hard drive space. And it’s got a lovely port at the back of it where I can plug in my brand new external hard drive that I will now conscientiously use for backing stuff up.