CPU Blues

Pardon me…I am mourning the death of information.

I was wide awake when the nightmare occurred, but stubbornly refused to believe it happened. Happily downloading some purchased, legal software from the Sonic site, which by the way was preloaded and recommended by my computer manufacturer, Dell; the monitor suddenly went (not blue) BLACK.

Hmmmm, says I. Whatever can be the matter? Time to hard boot. Done. That should fix it.

Noooooooo. No. No. Black screen persists! Maybe the CPU is working in the background and is just slow…I’ll leave my desk for a while (I knew better at this point). Next morning….black screen….it’s crying time again. Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot, Shoot!

Shoot me please!

I called Dell and spent about 3 hours on the phone with one of their technical reps in India. The Rep was both courteous and knowledgeable in a perfunctory sense. Although I can’t fault her diligence or patience, when we gave up on our collaborative effort and I looked at all of the online help, she was just following the same rote diagnostic steps that were on the website. We had discussed at this point, that the data is a lost cause and reformatting the hard drive is the only viable action. I had to try every command key, help option etc., before I would believe this.

There are stages of mourning, and at this point I was determined to accept and move on. So I opened up the RAID dialog, pushed the fatal enter key and reformatted the disk. It was much like having an upper GI to leave my personal junk behind like this. No hope left except to start over. It took me 3 days to reload, verify, register and test the software so that I could get my system back. I’m still not quite satisfied, but I will say that I found Verizon’s DSL help desk much more thorough than the one at Dell. At least they told me some things that I didn’t know and didn’t have access to on my own. .

A positive note is that both MyFamily.com,Ancestry.com and PLAXO had files on their sites where I can recover some of the contacts, personal photos and genealogy. Our PDA, unfortunately doesn't have many files downloaded to it, even though there was plenty of capacity. If it weren't for these offsite resources, I would have nothing left. More thought on that later.

This computer is 6 months old, but had about 4 years of data on it. Resumes, personal files and letters, financial downloads and spreadsheets I worked hours on, many blog articles, family pictures, Calendars, Business Plans and over 300 Contacts….Shoot is turning to S_ _ t.

This is MY fault. Not because I was inept or ignorant of what I should do, but because I didn’t do it. I had an inflated confidence in the new high tech piece of equipment and thought a 6 month back-up would be sufficient for the amount of data I was storing. What I failed to remember is the IMPORTANCE of the data to my sanity and well being. I forgot also that a couple of hours a day for someone who works at the rate that I do can add up to a heck of a lot of lost work in a crash.

Three things I learned from this: BACK UP YOUR DATA ,BACK UP YOUR DATA REGULARLY and 6 Months is way too long, regardless of the size of your files. It's just as easy to set up a backup to run on auto nightly as it is to do it manually at longer intervals. (I am flogging myself now, a modern day info-penitente!)

Now that I’m back in business, my stage of mourning turns to paranoia about the lost information. Exactly where is it lost? Is it aboard some version of the Starship Enterprise, headed for worlds unknown? Is it fodder for an advertiser’s consumer soup list? Is a hacker shredding the irrelevant parts and using them to stuff living room pillows while he/she contemplates a suitable use of my finances? Are they part of the supreme energy that sustains us and keeps the earth spinning? Sheeeesh.

I guess we’ll never know.

Lord forgive me this expletive, but Damn it!

Sympathy cards accepted. Warm thanks in advance.

Paula