Imagination is a wonderful thing. (image via Wikimedia Commons)
So, darlings, imagine me in a fluffy blue peignoir, scarfing down small but exquisite chocolates and dictating this blog to my personal assistant like a 21st century Barbara Cartland. I shall be imagining it, too, since a pilly blue fleece, some whole-grain crackers and the android voice recognition system just don’t seem to match the elegance and sheer decadence that I feel I deserve at this point in the game.
You see, dear readers, on March 24 I reminded you that it might be ever-so-practical to back up your computer once in a while. And, oh, what good fairies were looking after me that week because I not only gave good advice, but I took it, too!
The semi-prophetic line from that post that now grabs my attention is: “I’ve been skating on thin ice for the last several months – one hot cup of tea over the keyboards away from disaster.”
Alas, my pale, drab real life was not even as dramatic as that. It was room-temperature tap water that I spilled on the balding and broken left shift key. The results were still a disaster. Currently, my computer squeals electronically when I turn it on, and refuses to cooperate with the external ergonomic keyboard I bought in a fit of optimism after a particularly rough NaNoWriMo November. The data is all there on the laptop, but I can’t quite access it.
Eight Ladies Writing is a romance blog, and there WILL be a happy ending. My data is safe and backed up, along with all my stories and research pictures and notes. And this Saturday morning, I will drive a thousand miles (with my artistic license in my purse, of course) to Sapporo to get some sort of new device. Hopefully something that is lithe, handsome and doesn’t come at too steep a price. I shall fall in its electronic arms, and never take for granted the ease of keyboard composition again!
Wishing all of you the happiness of knowing you’ve got a steady, dry system that’s been backed up from here to the very clouds of heaven (or Finland, if that’s where your cloud data is stored). There will be a happy ending!
Eight Ladies Writing 
Sorry your device never came back to life. The good news is a new device that can handle everything you need is probably within financial reach. Prices have come down a lot in the last several years. I just hope you don’t literally have to go 1,000 miles to get it!
LOL, I was being a bit of a drama queen. Handwriting may bring that side out of me . . . . It was only 193 km each way, which is even less in miles. Home before 10 p.m., so that was good!
Thank you so much for that post. It finally motivated me to stop working off my little, demon-shaped flash drive and move my WIP to my desktop, which is backed up daily by Carbonite. Nothing bad has happened, but it’s a lot more restful knowing that, if and when it does, I’m covered.
Enjoy your new computer!
(-: Yeah, no sense in gambling. You can probably get by with a weekly transfer from the USB . . . but then again, if you’ve written something brilliant, Murphy’s Law says that’s the day you’ll drop your flash drive in a mud puddle.
What do you think about all this syncing that’s going on? Windows 10 would love to sync everything to all my devices, and I do see the immediate convenience. But once I get stuff moved onto this computer, it will be my main computer. I don’t really think I’ll be typing on one at home, and another at work, and a third in coffee shops. If I did change devices often, I might be more interested in syncing. It’d be another back-up system.
I have everything synced via my Mac and I love it (I know, not windows, but the principle is the same). I can view stuff on my phone, iPad, and computer. And because I use Scrivener, which has an app, I can write my MS both on my Mac and on my other devices. I find it incredibly convenient, too, to have all my devices caught up on email, texts, and whatnot. I couldn’t live without it.
So much is synced these days! I read that if you pay for Microsoft Office, you can get it across five devices — presumably synced!
I’m sure it’ll come to that one day; right now, I’m enjoying the separate sandboxes. I only watch YouTube on my phone and in the evenings. My email is on my computer, and I only check it during the day. Maybe I need a computer for just writing. Evenings with the cats and my writing, instead of watching YouTube on the sofa.
Oh, Michaeline, I’m so sorry for your loss! But what a great story you told about it. I smiled the whole way through, not that that’s a wholly appropriate response to disaster. Good luck with getting a new device! I just replaced my seven-year-old desktop with a low-cost-but-still-handsome laptop, and while I’ve had to cope with the demons of Windows 10, it’s a huge improvement over what I had. Sending you good shopping thoughts!
We do have to find the humor in these things. I was completely over the top, and it did make me feel better. Some stingy little voice snarked in the background, “Hah! You are sooooo privileged. There are writers still using sticks and sand, and having their works blow away in the wind. And you are whining about a computer!” But I said, “Shut up, little voice,” and continued with the purple prose. I do think handwriting makes me feel freer to get all fake about things. There’s a more direct connection between me and the keyboard, but with handwriting, there are other things going on that I must think about at the same time.
Fingers crossed that by now you’ll have found the perfect match, Michaeline! Wishing you and your handsome new sidekick a long, happy and productive life together 😉
I am satisfied. He’s not the cheap floozy I was looking for — in fact, there’s only the fact that he’s an i5 core instead of an i7 core that distinguishes him from my old computer. (Plus the fact that it’s Windows 10, and I am committed to trying to keep stuff off this computer except what I need.) I think we’ll be happy. My Toshiba Dynabook was the first computer that died an untimely death. I replaced the other two mostly because of senility.