January 17, 2007

I'll listen to the radio

My mother is an extremely intelligent and educated woman. Her wit and ability to problem solve are formidable indeed, and seldom have I seen her completely overcome by a situation. (We shall excuse the years that she had four teenagers. Now that I've got three I don't think it's fair to bring it up.) I think that's why I find her reaction to a power outage hysterically funny. She can't quite get that the power is truly gone, all gone, everywhere in the house. Mum just keeps trying everything that plugs in and is disappointed over and over. When the tv goes off, mum says "Never mind, I'll listen to the radio. Oh? Radio's out too? Nevermind, I'll turn on this light and do a little reading. Oh....crap. Well, now's as good a time as any to catch up on the laundry. Damn. Forget that, I'll just get online and do some work while I wait...."
It goes on and on, and up until today, as I entered the first 24 hours of laptop withdrawal, I thought it was really, really funny. Laugh out loud funny.

Then there was today. I made coffee and went to check my email to find out what time I had an interview. Damn. Nevermind, I'll just sit here and wait. I'll do a little writing while I just wait for them to call. H. E. Double hockeysticks. Can't do that either. Screw it. I'll write on paper, I'll just print out the outline from the .....Son of a !!!, Chuck this. What time do I have to be at the dentist? I'll open my scheduler and....of for the love of all things holy... FINE. I'll phone the dentist and ...oh yeah. Can't open the address book. Well. I'll just load an audiobook onto my ipod and go for a walk....

You get the idea. Turns out the apple might not fall so far from the tree.

The laptop has gone to the computer doctor and he's pronounced it. Deader than a doornail. Totally bricked. It's still under warranty, so Apple will be sending along a new hard drive but that takes three to five business days. Once the new drive is in they are going to try data recovery from the old drive....and we shall see. I'm pretty worried (if we understand that by worried I mean sort of weepy and fragile) about two things. Firstly, that there will be no data recovered, since - and I'm only going to say this once...I had no backup. (I know. I know. I am being punished. Turns out that I had some pretty strange ideas about computer memory and servers and...well. You don't know what you don't know until you don't know it. I do think that they should come up with another name for all that "memory" you buy for a new computer if it doesn't remember anything....but that's a fight for another day.) Secondly, I'm getting on a plane on Wednesday to go to Madrona Fiber Arts, and if the computer isn't fixed by then I...I....well. I don't know if I can go away without a laptop. No blogging? No surfing? No internet chat with Joe and the kids? Five whole days of writing on....paper? (A friend reminded me today that War And Peace was written on paper. There's a sobering thought, sort of gives me a hand cramp just thinking about it. Can anybody write by hand faster than they type these days?)

I've got my fingers crossed.

In the meantime I'm back on the old eMac, vying for time and space with Joe and the kids, patched together right here in the middle of the main floor. There's (sort of) email capability, though I don't have access to all of the emails I had in my inbox, just brand spanking new ones, I think that I can post to the blog...I guess I'll know in a minute, and

Millieyogacatbag

Yogabagdet0112

Oh look! I was going to say that I couldn't do pictures but I figured it out. That's the finished yoga bag that I gave my sister-in-law. Nice, eh? (Cat bonus at no additional charge.) Wait....

Stephdrhat0112

Yo! A new hat. Noro Silk Garden in colour 84. It bears a striking resemblance to Dr. Steph's hat pattern, and it would bear an exact resemblance except I couldn't look it up on her site because my laptop is a brick applied a little creativity to it. Mine is knit flat, with fewer stitches and different decreases. Totally inspired by Dr. Steph though. Actually, now that I think of it, she designed the yoga mat bag too....All Steph, all the time around here.

Now, if nobody minds, I'm going to go and call the computer store to ask about the data recovery and see where the hard drive is for the 457th time. I'm pretty sure it's helping keep them on track.

PS. If this works I'm totally going to have a celebratory shot of good scotch.

Posted by Stephanie at January 17, 2007 8:08 PM