lagilman | That Was Not The Day You Were Looking For… (Reply)

So yesterday I set up my to-do list, and I settle in with my cup of coffee #1, and I lift the lid of the trusty workhorse laptop (whose name is Archie to Nero-the-cranky-desktop), and…

The screen displayed not the usual “okay boss, hopping to it!” energy, but the unending beachball of doom-about-to-fall.

And sure enough, soon after that: everything froze.

Not having time, patience, or any other valuable commodity to spare, I finally did the only thing I could do: a hard reboot.

And got the Grey Screen of UnBooting.

We’ll cut the begging, pleading and attempts to fix it myself using all the helpdesk things that never work. I got a Genius Bar appointment at 2pm.

…Four Hours Later….

It took TWO geniuses to fix things (the second was named Lex. I can has an Evil Genius? I can!), but at 6pm I was on my way back home with a new hard drive, and the promise that yes, it was all working now, all I had to do HONEST was plug it back into my Time Machine/Time Capsule, and everything would be restored. Really. Trust us*.

Having a hard drive fail, when you’re mid-book, and being told “yeah, it happens” does not make one feel inspired to trust. I’m just saying.

I want to give kudos to my geniuses, though. They were dealing with a writer on deadline, whose writing machine had just failed under her fingertips, who had stormed into their bar on a quivering high of coffee and not a hell of a lot else (me to a friend, via text: “oh crap, I haven’t eaten anything today. It’s 5pm. I’m about to go into meltdown”) and kept me from utterly losing it, even when reinstall after reinstall failed.

Anyway: if you haven’t backed your shit up today, whatever your shit may be? Take a moment. Do it. Trust me. Full system backup. Every. Damn. Day.

And now, I need to finish this coffee, open up my (restored! Up-to-date!) files, and get the hell back to work.

*edited to add: they were right

Originally Published at Practical Meerkat: A Blog. You can comment here or there.