Do NOT get me started on my computer woes. I am thinking very bad thoughts about the evil person who messed with Adobe Flash player and caused my hard drive to become what everyone (most everyone) thought was a fatal disease.
[Well, I think I have to discuss this. Be patient with me. After all, this does have to do with my writing life. I will begin by saying how dependent I have obviously gotten on technology. I am actually thinking though of paper and pen writing everything JUST IN CASE. Oh well, not going to do that as long as there are technicians smarter than I am.]
This WOE of course began late Friday night. I managed to rescue my data (most of it) by erasing my computer and reinstalling from the backup on my Time Capsule. PEOPLE! You have to have back-up! I was also forward thinking enough at 3 AM to go online and schedule an appointment for Saturday at the Apple Store. I drove to Portland the next day and spent several hours there while they diagnosed the problem. They needed to keep on with that to see if the thing could be repaired/restored to its full functionality (I had no use of Safari or iWeb), so I had to leave the laptop there overnight. They'd call. Here is where I starting hoping to bring down a plague on the "genius" who infected Adobe, officially calling him Virus Guy from this point onward — among other colorful names.
MEANWHILE, I decided to buy a new laptop. I did this after consultation with husband (CFO of family finances) and he said go ahead. Lovely that he GETS that my writing life depends upon no gaps in computer use and accessibility. So I did this, drove 1.75 hours back home, exhausted from almost total lack of sleep the night before.
By evening the Apple guy had called to say that it was no go on the infected machine and they would ship back to me on Monday, with all ok other than no access to internet or editing site. So I could take off the rest of my data (I'd put my writing files on a jump drive before taking the laptop to Apple). Grrr, I thought, but ok since I have my new laptop. I am at this point busily working out how to make myself functional on new machine. I sleep fitfully and head off to church etc Sunday morning.
By lunchtime, a call from Apple telling me another genius there (they really ARE geniuses) had taken on the project of recovery for my laptop and succeeded! I am by now doing the happy dance UNTIL I remember that I just bought a whole new laptop!
OK, now they are shipping me a fully functioning laptop, no longer infected, and with new OS installed. (I am still steamed at Virus Guy of course for my sleeplessness and frustration and HOURS wasted.) Dilemma: I now have TWO fully-functional laptops. Everyone in this household is "laptopped." So, the plan as I see it is to connect both computers USB to USB and transfer rest of "stuff" I still need from now healthy laptop to new laptop. Then I will sell the one I am not going to be using. Do I put it on ebay? Do I advertise to the faculty in our local school district? Do I sell it within my own family? Do I ask my daughters if they know of someone who'd like a GREAT deal on a wonderful computer? What to do...
Any bright ideas out there, other than hunting down Virus Guy and wreaking havoc on him? This is a lovely thought, by the way. [forming hunting party, thinking of bows and arrows as weapons of choice]
