Thursday, February 23, 2012

My computer let me down....


My laptop died. About a month ago. At least it pretended to die. And I thought we were friends.

Let this be a lesson to you all. BACK EVERYTHING UP!!

Oh yes, I've read that missive before. I've heard it drilled into our heads at school a gazillion times. And I actually did back up my work......three years ago.

Not good enough apparently.

The thing that was attached to me by the hip let me down. Surprisingly it felt like a punch into the gut, like the wind got knocked out of me, like someone ate all my coconut mounds brownies.
(recipe to come.....)

I was grieving. I lost over 3,000 photos, a million recipes, untold amounts of school work and directions for a spinach smoothie that makes you forever young and rich beyond your wildest dreams.

To make a long story short, all of a sudden, after an attempt to download an update for itunes, my screen went gray, the apple symbol showed up and I was unable to sign in. Then the computer started to restart itself over and over and over again and I was never able to sign in.

The computer guy at school said I killed it. ('My' computer really belongs to the school.) He tried several things....his assistant tried different things....everyone researched the internet for solutions to no avail. The special 'architecture' of the 'school' programming did not allow
these remedies to be useful. It needed to be re-imaged, and then all gets erased no matter what.

BUT...it didn't make any sense!!!! I hate things that don't make sense. It didn't make sense to my son either. And he knows EVERYTHING. (ahem)

Everything was still on my computer....right behind that dang gray screen. We just couldn't get there.
The hard drive did not get run over by a bus. It's was still intact. All my stuff was still there. I knew it was.

ALWAYS GET SECOND OPINIONS. Eventually I found someone that knew how to surgically remove my hard drive, put it into another computer and access all my stuff!! It's all jumbled up, no rhyme or reason to it, but it all appears to be there.

Except the directions for the smoothie.