Oh. My. Gawd!! 
My heart is racing and I think I might be sick. 
I was in the middle of a long post when my POS computer did something it’s famous for: it shut off my USB bus. Does it all the time, a couple times a day. Now, when this happens my optical mouse shuts off, my cable modem shuts off, my printer shuts off, and my jump drive shuts off. So there went the long blog post because without my internet connection there was no way to save it. I had to reboot the computer to get everything back on again. Only when I restarted it, the jump drive wouldn’t come on.
Try again. Green power light on jump drive flickers, then dies.
Try again.
Try again.
Start panicking. Heart races like mad, tears form, sweat breaks out, stomach roils. All of my mss are on that jump drive. And while I did upload them to my server, I haven’t uploaded them again since Thanksgiving. All the edits to story #2 are on the drive. So is the complete first half of story #3. If I lose them, there is no way I will get finished by my deadline. 
I haven’t sent the stories out to my cps. There’s no copies anywhere!
Mind scrambles. Go to computer store, pray they can fix it. Run out and buy new computer even though we can’t afford it yet. Finally, I shut off the computer. Remove the jumpdrive and insert it directly into the back of my computer. Restart computer while crying and close my eyes, clasp my hands together, and pray to God to give me one more chance.
It works 
And when I check my documents, they’re uncorrupted. *whew*
Get online immediately. Upload new versions to my server. E-mail new versions to my GMail account. Get on my blog and say, “Ladies. Right now. Go backup everything in a couple different places. Everything happens for a reason!! Save your stuff.”
Go collapse in bed and
Oh, yeah, Steph, blame me.
Glad you recovered everything, Sylvia. Our dino CPU died a month or so ago, and DH, who is NOT a computer genius by any means, tried to restart it himself. It wants Microsoft numbers I can’t find, so I’m letting it sit dead. Panic was this morning when I dropped the cup of hot chocolate next to the school laptop. I’m going to start the CD thing but for now, have everything uploaded to my Yahoo Briefcase.
on January 2nd, 2005 at 5:48 pm
Larissa,
Hubby got my jump drive (512 mb) for $30 at Best Buy and it is worth every penny!!
on January 2nd, 2005 at 12:26 pm
Okay, now I’m paranoid. I’m going to invest in a jump drive this week.
Glad you saved your stuff, Sylvia!
And Steph, the CDs for saving stuff every night is a good idea. When we get our next computer with a CD-Write drive, I may have to do that!
on January 2nd, 2005 at 12:10 pm
Whew! So glad you were able to recover Sylvia! I save my ms on floppy’s and now I have jumpdrive that I’m saving on and I email copies. I also upload copies on a regular basis. But I think now it might be a good idea to do a weekly back-up of ms.
on January 2nd, 2005 at 10:53 am
My heart hasn’t beat this fast since Linda mentioned the ‘disconnect’ word yesterday. Am glad you didn’t lose anything.:smile:
My IT makes me treat my stuff like I’m a corporate person. It’s a little extreme, but…
1. Once weekly, save all documents to CD-R
2. Take 7 CD-RW’s - Label Mon - Sun. Save all Documents nightly on appropriately labeled CD-RW’s. These CD-RW’s are good for about 1 year, so label them accordingly. It’s kind of a pain but once I got used to it, it’s comforting.
I have one of those mini-drives too where I save the fulls. I also email myself stuff, even though he tells me that’s not necessary. But after the computer went crazy last month and ate 20 new pages, I am paranoid. :roll::shock:
on January 2nd, 2005 at 7:55 am