Thank-You Slow Decline

I had that moment of panic when I realized my computer was dying. It all came to a head when the spinning beach ball of death was looming ominously and I was unable to Force Quit applications normally. So I ended up manually turning off my computer, and when I tried starting it up again I got a flashing folder with a question mark on it instead of the normal Apple icon. [Pause.] Not a good sign. So I turned off my computer to let it rest and cursed myself about the files I had yet to back up. Suddenly I was quite religious, praying that my computer would let me access it one last time so I could transfer my files to an external hard drive. Luckily, my computer wasn’t quite dead yet (just mostly dead, like in The Princess Bride.)

Eventually I was able to gain access to my computer and transfer (although slowly) files that I definitely wanted to keep. I quickly came to the conclusion that a new computer was necessary, but I wanted to wait until the weekend to get one since I knew it would take some time to set everything up. So for the couple of days I still used my old computer, I treated it with kid gloves. I was paranoid of having it crash on me, so I did my best not to overwork it; I would only open one application at a time, and every two hours of work I did on my computer equated to two hours of it being off so it could rest. It made for some ineffective work methods, but at least my computer didn’t crash. [Half-hearted: yay.]

While my dying computer brought me much stress, I was grateful for its slow decline. If it would have just died suddenly, then I would have lost work that I would have had to then redo (which would have irritated me greatly). So if it had to die (as all things must eventually), I’m glad it was a long drawn out death because it was just much more convenient for me.

When Backing Up Bites You in the Ass

I thought I would do the responsible thing and back up my files. It’s not something I do religiously but do every so often once I’ve accumulated things worth backing up. So I started to transfer some files and had some error messages (that I admit barely looked at), and this was an ominous precursor to the unwelcome appearance of the spinning beach ball of death. Unable to force quit and with the gleefully spinning beach ball mocking me I turned off my computer and disconnected my external hard drive (which I know is bad).

When my computer was up and running again, I once again tried to transfer the files that had caused me problems before but the folder was gone. It wasn’t on my computer or my external hard drive. I blankly stared at my computer, somewhat disbelieving that my files were actually gone and then reality set in. They were gone. So I cursed my computer. I blamed it for eating my files. I cussed at it for being stupid and inept and just plain mean. And when I finished, I yelled at it again. It made me feel slightly better…slightly…for about ten seconds.

It was disappointing to lose those files. Luckily there wasn’t anything irreplaceable; I’d lost a folder of images I’d created. There were some images that if I really wanted, I’d have to draw them again in Illustrator, but most of the necessary images were hand drawings that I just had to scan, alter, crop and relink all over again. It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it that irked me, it was the fact that I’d already done it once; it’s just such a waste of time and energy to redo something that was already done.

But complaining about it wouldn’t get my images replaced any faster. You just have to suck it up and do it and know that it blows. [Sigh.] I suppose it could have been worse—I could have lost something that truly was irreplaceable or a folder with vast amounts of information that would take forever to replace. So I guess in the grand scheme of things it sucked—but just mildly. [Half hearted: Yay.]