The Not-A-Post Post

I was going to do the normal Sunday morning post today, but – and this is the short version of the story – I need to check every single document that’s been restored since the hard drive failure.

Why?

Because yesterday, when I thought everything was ready to get back to work – I saw it. Opened the next WIP, and there it was. Gobbledegook, in the extreme. The stuff that happens when …

So I did all the things usually done to ‘restore’ broken docs. Failed. Failed. Failed.

What about all the others? What about …?

Open each folder that has important stuff – checked every document by opening and clicking inside. Almost every document failed.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have a few docs. I have resume stuff, notes and research stuff, I have 27 mss in various states of attire.

Well, I did.

Onto the hard drive where I did my backups each week.

Opened the doc that I tried to work on yesterday. Saw it. A rock fell on my head and went all the way down to my toes and forced me to kick the wall (that hurt!).

Yes, I keep backups each week. I went back and back and back – until about 3 months ago, where they come out clean.

So, I did what was expected. I tried to copy those ‘clean’ docs into my current computer files.

This short story just got very long.

The first point looked good, and I decided to go take a quick shower while it copied across (why sit and stare at a screen, I say to myself?). I come out and expect to see the files copied across.

A blue screen.

In the business, we call it the blue screen of death. Despite just stepping out of the shower, I broke out in a cold sweat. Threw myself at the computer. Turned it off. Sucked in big gulps of air. Sweated some more. Counted out the required mantra of time before I switched it back on.

It made the right noises, opened to the right start-up screen. Looked good.

Did I dare touch it?

My heart raced at a zillion miles an hour. Crap.

It took a few minutes before I dared to try anything. The first was the folders – nothing copied across, and the old files were still corrupted.

Do something! I deleted the docs I knew were corrupted. Dead is dead.

Put the external hard drive back in the usb socket.

Held my breath while I looked and checked and found – it was the same as before the blue.

Copied (one doc at a time) to the folder on the computer.

Waited. Played some hi-res, hi-resource games. Nothing. Did the hardware and software and system diagnostics. Nothing (I did find the entry for ‘major failure – unknown cause’ – very useful!).

When I finally got relaxed (late in the evening) I decided that the work wasn’t as good as it should’ve been, and it was a message to start again.

Do you believe that? I don’t have a choice. Go on or give up. And I will not give up. Ever met a terrier? Well, that’s me. My Chinese astrological sign if a Dog, so this dog is a terrier, and the chase goes on.

My gut still aches, but now I’m getting back to work, and wrangling out all the hand-written notes and scribbles to see how much sense they make, or even if they’re useful at all. Maybe this really is the time to ‘start fresh’ – c’est la vie!

I’m remembering a mantra I used to get through uni: patience, persistence and perseverance.