Technology Bytes

My computer has a virus. Or a worm. Or a Trojan Horse. Or corrupted Windows. Whatever. There's something horribly, horribly wrong with it, and that makes me very sad. It also makes me hysterical and angry. On Sunday, I watched helplessly as all of my personal-writing Word documents turned into Notepad files full of gibberish and asterisks. I wanted to hurl my big, clunky, corrupted Gateway machine out the window, then hurl myself onto my bed and weep while punching my pillow and kicking the mattress.

I didn't quite do all of that, but I did cry. I also stomped around my apartment wailing "Why now? What the f-ck? This is such bullsh-t!" and trying to talk myself through the trauma. The most upsetting part is that the disk I had my writing backed up on is corrupted also...I mean, really f-cked up...so I fear all the writing I've done in the last two years is irretrievable.

Enter Captain K, the computer-genius husband of coworker A, who has graciously swooped in to offer his expertise free of charge. My hero! He has volunteered himself (or, more accurately, his enormous brain) to try to determine what, exactly, is ailing my computer, and possibly to fix it. He may even be able to recover some files. Whee! Even if he can't do much, it's a start, and I'm grateful. The IT guys here at work, who make my head spin with all their techno-jargon, are also trying to help. They've e-mailed me some instructions for virus-scanning in DOS mode, which is very kind of them, but I don't understand the instructions whatsoever. Perhaps Captain K will. They've also given me an updated, all-powerful virus-scanning CD to run on my machine, to determine if a virus is indeed the problem.

In the meantime, I'm attempting to come to terms with losing my writing. It's not like it was fantastic (or even good) stuff, but many of the pieces had been through dozens of rewrites and had been steadily improving over the course of the last several months or so. I dug up some hard copies of some things, but they're my first drafts from a year or two ago. I guess that's better than nothing.

Perhaps I should view this loss as a new beginning. (Cue violins.) Perhaps I should also avoid clichés. But what I mean is, I've been considering a couple of memories I'd like to write about, so maybe it's time to put pen to paper (not fingers to keyboard, yet, until this damn virus---or whatever---is fixed) and actually get to work. I've never written about being hit by the car, and I think that's a story worth telling. I think it's safe to assume that the average person has not been hit by a car while jogging and might be curious to know what that's like. Also, it's a story with a happy ending, now that I'm running again.

That reminds me: My last post, which never made it on-line as a result of the computer debacle, was about the joy of last Saturday's three-mile run. Also, it was about the joy of drinking a big, free Starbucks iced coffee afterward. I discovered my computer horror shortly after saving the post to disk. How quickly joy can turn to despair. And rage. And dark, violent thoughts about Bill Gates and his crappy Internet Explorer, which is maddeningly vulnerable to attacks from hackers and other virus-making evil geniuses.

P.S. I'd like to give a shout-out to coworker and talented blogstress, J, also known as Gintastic, who writes a blog that's much more interesting, clever, and funny than this one. Also, I think she's only the second person to ever read my blogs. Maybe she's reading right now! Hi J!