Evanesco!

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.

Once again, from the top.