Well, those were the worst 30 hours of my life.
The one thing to say is that not being able to blog was, in one sense, incrediby freeing - the pressure I'd been feeling to produce was reduced considerably knowing that there was essentially nothing I could do; I sort of held fast to the thought that you, dear readers, would continue to read and bear with me (I was helped, to some degree, by this link from a group discussion blog in Kansas City). (I also just discovered this link, which explains why so many people seem to come to my Jake Ryan picture.)
If you need me to tell you the importance of backing things up, then you're probably already in bad shape - we've been in this modern computer age too long, and everyone has had the experience, I think, of at least the lost document, or the funny crash of your pooter that causes unexpected damage... if not the total meltdown I just had. In fact, I'm better now than I was last time, and the times before that - I have a couple of portable drives that were serving as repositories for various pieces of data (though not, again, my iTunes, which will mean reconstructing it from my iPod for the second time).
Oddly, for such a crisis, I feel like I was pretty serene - I was helped by the fact that what appeared to be an overlong day at work opened up when the trainee I was supposed to mentor didn't show... without that, I wouldn't have had a moment to get to The Apple Store and try to cobble a solution together. But basically, I knew the drill. Once your pooter can't find the folder to open itself, you're basically done - especially on Macs.
And yes, I am still a Mac. I don't blame my iBook for its own death; it had melted down once, the warning signs were there - things running slow, glitchy moments with various programs. I honestly just thought I'd have more time to back things up. But you don't and it just has to be a forced ritual. If anything, I am grateful that pooters - especially Macs - are so plug and play that I am back up basically after taking it out the box and plugging in; one easy reroute back to the net, and hear I am (and this new Safari seems better equipped to manage my TypePad, so I may not need Firefox back. But I will probably still go back to it).
Am I sad? A little. If there had been more time lag to getting back, I'd be more frustrated, less even keeled. There are a couple of things I'm pretty sure I lost that I wish I hadn't (which was true the last time too, including the start of a novel that I really regret; which kind of happened again, but I was less further developed this time). Mostly I am relieved, and very grateful (I'll get to that part in the next post).
So yes, I am back. Miss me? I missed you. All of you. Honest. :)
Comments