Oh yes, I got it. I am coming to you live from my new laptop. I've waited over a year for this.
Really. An entire year.
Actually, more than that. My old laptop died in May of 2008. It was a rough week in general. One of those week where the whole world comes crashing down around your ears.
My laptop dying was first. I was just reading through some old stories on it late at night when suddenly the screen went black. In a Mac, we would call it The Blue Screen of Death. I guess in Windows its called the Black Screen of Death.
Regardless, being the computer person that I am, I knew what it meant. I knew it was bad. I knew either my motherboard or my hard drive was fried.
Looking back I now know it was my motherboard and maybe it could have been fixed. But let's face it, I got that laptop in June of 2001. It followed me through that summer after senior year, the beginning of college, 9/11, all the stuff that happened in college, the end of college, after college, getting engaged...it lasted a long time. On 4G of space. It was angry towards the end, arguing with me that it didn't have enough virtual memory and of course that's bad for the computer. I tried to delete files and programs but eventually it was just too much. 7 years of solid use for my Compaq was just too much and it died.
I cried. For days. I was lost without that laptop. It literally was my best friend. Being a writer, you understand, my entire life was documented on that tiny black machine. I did everything I knew to do. I sweet talked it. I restarted in Safe Mode. I petted it. I begged it.
IIt was just dead. And all my stories, my entire life, was sitting on the hard drive.
I got desktop from a garage sale. We ripped apart my laptop, knowing we were out of options (We being me and my dad, a computer guru) and tried to install the hard drive into the PC. No dice. I was on the phone with Ross, crying about how I just wanted my files and everything would be fine.
Finally, I found a little computer shop in Sun Ray Shopping Center that seemed to be able to help. I took my precious hard drive to them (that's all it was by that point, just a hard drive) and they turned it into an external hard drive for $80.
It worked. Sort of.
I have an $80 paper weight right now because several months after they "fixed" it, it randomly stopped working. But it was enough. By then I'd learned my lesson and as soon as I got my files back I burned them onto a c.d.
That c.d. is sitting in my safe right now. Really. I won't take that chance again. But of course I still have an $80 paper weight sitting in my filing cabinet. I don't care. I'd pay it over 100 times to get those files back.
I remember once when I was in high school and I was at my boyfriend at the time's house, playing a game of "Would You Rather"--an actual board game version. His mom read off a card, and I don't remember what the first option was, but the second option was "or lose your entire life's work." Of course I thought of all my stories and felt ill. I couldn't imagine it! It would have been some of the worst possible torture.
So there I was, in May of 2008, faced with that very possibility. I waited on pins and needles a solid week to find out the fate of my life's work.
In between that week: my kitten was sick, my dad landed in the hospital and had to have emergency surgery, my Memorial Day vacation was ruined, and I landed myself in the middle of a tornado and major hail storm that severly damaged my car.
That was ONE week, people. There was more that happened but honestly I can't remember it any more. I think I blocked it out. I remember sitting in the living room (before the tornado!) thinking that I must have done something really bad because honestly, what else could happen to me at this point? My life was a total hhole...and like I said that was before the tornado hit.
So a piece of advice: Never say "It can't get any worse than this." Because trust me, IT CAN. I lived it. Every time I said it, something else happened.
So I've been through 3 computers trying to find a replacement for my beloved laptop. The one I bought at a garage sale (lots of space, video card from the 1980s), my parents old computer (had a video card from the 1990s but still sucked and couldn't use broadband internet) and one we bought off Craig's List. That one is actually a pretty decent computer, a few quirks, but semi-modern. It's Ross's computer now :) We fought over it a lot. So I'm so happy to finally, FINALLY have a laptop replacement.
Now I just have to replace a lot of things that didn't get transfered from my parents computer--i.e. my iTunes files. My dad had burned them all onto a disk so he could delete them from his computer...only he didn't burn them all. I've got like, 1/3. And I still have to go through everything I downloaded on our other computer and get that on here.
Thankfully Windows 7 has this neat little folder in My Music called "Add to iTunes Automatically" so all I do is drag the files in there and it does the rest of the work. Now if only I had the rest of the files....They're on my iPod but every program I've found that transfers them costs money...I don't know what to do about this. I guess I will still not sync my iPod (it hasn't been sunk? since December...) until I figure out what to do.
Oh yeah and tomorrow is the Swarm Tryouts. I'm kinda glad I had so much to do with this tonight (including 2 hours in live chat with Qwest to get my internet working) so I couldn't think about it. You know there is a 90% chance I won't make it? There are only 10 spots and if 100 girls show up... Yeah that's pretty depressing.
I should probably go to bed now. It is after midnight. Of course I'm on a laptop now and I could just take it to bed with me and keep typing haha!!!
Oh yeah and I decided to name my laptop Pinkie. I like to name things. My car's name is Cobie. I used to name all our cars. We had a '87 Corolla named Luke, an '87 Oldsmobile named Jessie, and an '89 Plymouth Sundance named Pat. I didn't like the car very much and I didn't like the name Pat so--bam. I stopped naming cars however when we traded Jessie for a mini van. I was very upset. Jessie was my favorite car ever (a pearl red coupe with mag wheels) and the mini van was...well it was a mini van. I was so upset I refused to name it. And then the naming trend kind of ended. Until I named my Cavalier Cavi and then it went on again... Although I did name our '96 Chevy pickup "The Monster" but that was just because it was a big truck and it was stick and it was hard to drive... Of course you know that was the first car I ever drove. My dad is that mean :) I was 15 and he was picking me up from the mall and said "you want to drive?" and of course I said sure...and he said "all right, move over!" I couldn't believe he was serious, but he was. He made me drive that thing around the parking lot.
He actually tried to teach me to drive when I was 12--we had a Jeep and he wanted me to take it off roading for driving practice. But my one condition was that I had to read the owner's manual cover to cover first and it just never happened.
It wasn't a big deal, he let me drive our boat whenever I wanted. That was like my car until I got my license. I started driving that when I was 9, which was good or bad, depending on how you look at it. It did give me a terrible habit of drifting all over the road because a boat just naturally drifts while you're driving it... We almost went home with a few mailboxes implanted in our hood the first time I ever actually drove a car on the road.
Well now I really better go to bed.
Until tomorrow (or Sunday...)
It's after midnight, I should probably go to bed.
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