Please Learn From My Mistakes (with Gratitude Where it is Due)

After a very busy couple of weeks filled with family and work demands, I finally sat down last night and turned on my laptop to do some writing only to discover that the operating system wouldn't boot. When I tried to do a repair, it couldn't see an operating system on the machine to repair. I know what all of my Mac-owner friends are already thinking, but keep reading as there's a lesson in here for all of you as well.

It didn't take me long to think that I wasn't going to be able to boot the machine which was immediately followed by admitting to myself that I hadn't done a single backup of any of the materials on my laptop. I went to bed practically in tears but trying to make the best of it, telling myself that it was an opportunity to re-write everything I'd ever written and to make it better. I wasn't really buying it and worst of all I kept berating myself because I'd spent 10 years in Information Technologies and should know better!

I woke up, started thinking about the cost of data recovery from a disk drive, didn't believe it could possibly be the hard drive but had a deep concern about the motherboard or the controller. The BartPE disk I had for XP didn't work, probably because it was Windows. I started thinking about all of the changes that I wanted to make to the three women script since I would be re-writing it from scratch anyway.

I drove to work this morning tossing this all over in my head and praying. My significant other emailed some words of encouragement and technical advice early in the morning. I had a cup of tea and began the day's tasks but couldn't get my mind off the laptop. I booted the machine and went into repair options again. I thought I didn't have too much to lose, thinking that I'd probably already lost everything worth keeping, so I told it to repair the operating system that it couldn't see. I did that a couple of times and finally, that Windows login screen popped up. I think I woke up half the floor with my cries of joy.

I immediately plugged in a portable hard drive to the USB port and backed up every file worth saving and then some. And I recommend that all of you, including my Mac-loving friends, do the same.

As I write this, I'm thinking that a one day delay was good for the project since it inspired some great new ideas. I'm also thinking that my stubborn personality was a good thing for once. My partner might say that I'm rationalizing. You decide.