Strike Fear In Your Heart

What can give a writer a heart attack faster than a double cheeseburger with extra large fries? The words FATAL SYSTEM ERROR.

That coupled with your computer is infected (oh let's make it interesting -- 362 instances of infection) can give any writer a coronary. The above scenario was me two nights ago. My old trusty computer, a mere infant at 4 years old--okay, in computereze that's extreme old age, but for me it was still doing it's job and working fine--more importantly it had ALL my files on it. Yes, some files were backed up on my external hard drive, and thankfully safe, but some--(foolishly some very important ones) were not.

Gone.

Gone forever.

Rest in peace old faithful.

Cry for a few minutes over all my manuscript files gone. Yep, that was the foolish part. I had all my article and short stories backed up, but... my manuscripts, gone. Gone for good. Well except for the published hard copies, but if I ever wanted to do anything with them again I'd have to re-type all 300-400 pages of any of them.

Not that I ever would. I mean I haven't messed with old manuscripts in all the time since they went into print, but hey, you never know. They key here is I CAN'T. That is the painful thing that hangs in the back of my mind.

Gone.

Gone too soon.

Before you think I'm sitting here in a pool of tears, let me tell you that every cloud has a silver lining, even if it's caused by one hum-dinger of a storm.

I have a new computer (thanks to a really REALLY great husband).

Couldn't really afford it, so I feel kind of guilty saying I LOVE IT.

It has the new Windows Vista op system, and I was shaking in my boots because I remembered back when I got my last computer how much I hated XP after being so used to 98SE.

Yep, it took a little while to get used to Vista, but wow... I have to tip my hat to Microsoft, they really came up with an interesting and fun operating system with some really cool new features.

I've heard a lot of complaints about it, but I think they're widely due to people feeling overwhelmed by the difference between the old and the new. It is so much different than it's predeccesors.

It took a long time to download all the updates for devices, but everything's up to speed now, and oh boy I'm happy.

On another side note--I got HIGH SPEED last week. Yes, out in the middle of nowhere I'm finally in the modern age of Internet. About time huh? That's the way it is out in the country, light years behind the rest, but when we finally catch up, yahoo, we're rollin and happy.