There’s nothing like a dead computer to focus one’s priorities.
I kept everything on there, despite the nearly constant advice of just about everyone who knows anything about data management.
The laptop suffered a fall to the floor. It was balanced on the arm of a recliner, but the incident is of course mostly due to the actions of a cat named Emma who wanted to rub her face on it. I slowly started to go into shock when I pushed the button to restart it and it didn’t.
The button light came on, but nothing appeared on the screen. I drew upon decades of computer experience in formulating a response.
I pushed the button until the light went out. Counted to 10. Then I pushed it again. I might have done this 5-6 or a dozen times until accepting the truth.
The machine was dead. How dead, I didn’t quite realize until I took it in for repair and was told the hard drive was probably destroyed.
If it is completely gone, I will have lost more than four years of photos of celebrities, me and celebrities, and fellow comic and anime fans, pictures I took at conventions across the country since 2013.
Also, three years of Clarkston News photos, which I used to burn onto CDs, but stopped because they were much more conveniently located right there on the hard drive.
Six years of my webcomic, Living Room Wars, which is almost to number 600 and counting.
So now my old, battered laptop from the early days of the 2010s has come out of retirement in service of this week’s edition. I have to use a thumb drive because anything on the hard drive is immediately lost when it loses power, which it does regularly because it has no battery capacity and its wheezing fan can barely keep it from overheating.
Hopefully by next week my new laptop will be up and running.
It’s not all that bad. I uploaded my favorite convention photos to Facebook over the years, and webcomic archives are available on the website. Newspaper photos are on the Sherman Publication servers in Oxford, so I can still get those if needed.
Anyway, heed my tale of woe. Back up your stuff.