PC Load Letter Paper Jam
March 03, 2006
So I thought today was going to be a good day.
Unlike yesterday, Noah didn't wake up at 4 am with a hacking cough and full of righteous indignation at said hacking cough because it interrupted the flow of his screaming.
Unlike yesterday, Noah didn't throw up an entire 8 ounces of formula all over me, my bed, my pillow and Jason's ear at 4:30 am.
Unlike yesterday, I was not doing loads of vomitous laundry at 4:45 am, nor was I at work by 7:45 am, because while I'm okay with tossing a towel over a baby pee-stain on the bed, puddles of regurgitated Similac are something else entirely and FINE, I will get up and just go to work already.
Yesterday was a bad day. I was at work for 10 hours straight, had to speak in front of the entire company and I may have murdered a coworker or two. I barely made the daycare pick-up deadline and Noah's teacher informed me that all the babies had the same cough, and now seemed to be moving on to sharing a case of hand, foot and mouth disease. So you know, watch out for that.
But! Today seemed better! Noah slept until 7 and there was no screaming, just a happy baby chattering away to his hands, who are really good listeners and find Noah to be an excellent conversationalist. The cough is better, the mucus is abating and no one threw up on me, not even a little bit.
And then!
Hello! I am Amy's work computer! I greet you with happy blue screen of death! You are doomed! You are welcome!
My work computer blew the fuck up. It is "corrupted." It is "riddled with hard drive inconsistencies and bad cluster files." It is "not under warranty." It is "currently in many little pieces after I beat it to death with a baseball bat."
Helpful Network Guy: You save your stuff on your network drive, right?
Amy: Um.
Random Coworker Wondering Why I Am Weeping: But you can still get to your network drive, right?
Amy: Well, yes, but...um.
Amy's Boss: I save everything on the network drive. You do too, right?
Amy: I am going to go lie down in the parking garage for a little while.
So yes. I am really, really dumb. Four years of files are more than likely gone forever.
I sort of take a Unabomberesque approach to data management, as I simply don't trust network drives for some reason and prefer to instead create the world's most crowded and bizarrely structured My Documents folder, which is where I put EVERYTHING, in a series of folders and subfolders that only make sense to me.
Looking for a spreadsheet of stock market returns? No, that is not in the "Spreadsheets" folder, that contains the Word docs of stuff that I need to create spreadsheets for, but haven't yet. No, the actual spreadsheets are in My Pictures, in the folder labeled "Money." I mean, duh.
I am also lazy and never back anything up. If Typepad eats it, a la Diary-X, y'all will just have to remember the archives from memory.
Anyway, I looked on my network drive and found the following:
1. My Outlook Sent Items folder, circa June 2003
2. Four photos of my shoes, circa God knows when, but apparently stacked heels were really in.
3. A Word document on why Enron is the commodity stock of the future, circa July 2001
Helpful Network Guy messed around with my computer for quite some time this morning, while I paced around my office, chewing on my fingers, drinking cup after cup of coffeecoffeecoffee and texting people on my phone because the lack of email was KILLING ME, and I was even texting COWORKERS because I don't really know where people sit and have lost my list of phone extensions because WHO NEEDS IT when you have EMAIL, GLORIOUS EMAIL.
Helpful Network Guy: I'll bring you a temporary computer while I work on trying to save your data.
Amy: *thinks about all the personal crap on her work computer*
Amy: *thinks about the spare copies of her resume on her work computer*
Amy: *thinks about the baby pictures. the belly pictures. the dog pictures. the shoe pictures.*
Amy: Um. Could you maybe...you know...recover stuff without really looking at it?
Helpful Network Guy: What?
Amy: Excuse me, I need another cup of coffee.
Amy: *realizes that the Irish Creme coffee creamers are not actually getting her drunk in the slightest and considers writing Coffeemate a letter about false advertising*
Amy: Damn it, I'd really rather just send them an email.
Helpful Network Guy: What?
First comment!
I'm sorry you had such a bad day. If it makes you feel any better I would probably save nothing on my computer if not for my father, who breathes fire every time he sees the last time I backed things up.
EEEK! Blue screen of death.
I feel your pain.
Yeah, I would be so screwed if my work computer crashed. Which is likely, since it's a Power Macintosh G3. I think it's powered by hamsters.
I may have shed a little tear for you just now. And am very fearful because I save nothing on the network, because that means someone may find that I keep all pictures taken of me since I was 3 days old on my work laptop. Oh and my entire music collection. Which has just about filled up all of my hard drive. But who cares, because I can listen to music while I work. Hooray.
Good luck to you and the Helpful Network Guy (and good luck getting drunk on your lunch break)!
I am going to use this post as a reminder to backup my computer this weekend.
so really? you are doing a public service here! thanks! (but sorry that happened...hopefully they won't snoop)
You make even bad days funny. Which, I know, doesn't help you much, but is entertaining to read. Love your site, love Snarkywood. Wish I could write as funny as all of y'all. Sigh. But thanks for sharing your world with us.
Oh, and sorry about the blue screen of death thing. Major bummer.
If that's not hell, I dont know what is. Im so sorry. Hopefully he will get everything back for you and after you buy him a bottle of expensive wine, he will forget all of the photos he saw...
Oh, poor you! If it makes you feel any better, I'm going to start saving stuff to my h drive at work, because my current system? SOOOOO much like yours. Thank you for saving me.
Hope you recover all of your pictures without too much embarrassment.
oh GOD, amy! that is perhaps the most horrifying thing ever. i hope hope HOPE you get all that stuff back! (you have copies at home, right? RIGHT?!?)
Oh, and I love the sidebar picture too. Too cute.
That SO blows. It reminds me of that one Sex and the City episode where Carrie's computer kind of does the same thing and Aiden reprimands her for not backing up her files on CD. But you are way cooler than Carrie Bradshaw. I mean, she didn't even have a blog!
Definitely not a good start to the day! They force us to put things on the network drive here, and after being yelled at once for not doing so, I save pretty much everything on the network. Even my resume (which has to be used for proposals so I have an excuse for keeping an up-to-date one on there - woohoo!). Good luck with getting everything back!
I just survived through the same thing with my home pc and even sunk to having to check my email at the public library.
The good news - helpful computer guy was able to recover my hard-drive with very few exceptions. I was most upset that I would loose the last year of my kids pictures since I never seem to get around to printing out the digital photos.
At least it's Friday and you can really drink tonight!
Oh, Holy Hell, that sucks.
My fingers are crossed for full recovery.
ahhH! i feel your pain! my computer at home decided to DIEDIEDIE and if my boyfriend can't get everything off my old hard drive using somet thingiething that holds the hard drive (! maybe you can use one of those!) so i can hook it up and drag 'n drop all my old crap that i wanted to save, everything's GONE.
the sad thing? i'd decided i probably wanted to back stuff up, i just had to get cds, and then it DIED!!!
you have the personal stuff at home, i hope? or you can download it off the blog? *lol* :)
A million years ago I spilled water on my laptop. I called Apple and asked them what to do. They said I was likely fucked, but that I should wait for it to dry and then turn it on. I did this, and on start-up it made a little chimey noise, so I called Apple back and they had me play the noise over the phone. Three levels of manager up, I got the guy who could tell me, "Oh yeah, that's the death chime."
It was like a sick joke, but not.
Good luck with the Blue Screen of Death.
Death chime! HA!
Helpful Network Guy just asked me to email him my network password, and I just died a little more because my password is kind a really embarassing nickname I have for Noah.
I stopped reading this halfway through and backed up My Documents (where I put EVERYTHING) to my network drive. You would think I would have learned my lesson the last time I got the Blue Screen 1.5 years ago. Fortunately, the IT guy recovered it. Unfortunately, I haven't backed it up once since then. Until today!
Good luck!
Those networking guys can really work wonders though, maybe he can recover all your stuff! Fingers crossed
Diary X just ate two plus years of my journal without a moment's notice. I feel your pain, I really do. Fucking machines.
But.. I thought you invented the backing up of files?!
I'm shocked!
And now I feel like a complete ASS for bothering you yesterday.
(I won't say what I REALLY want to say, but I will say...) How Inconsiderate of me.
AAAAAHHHHH
Oh my... What a horrible no good very bad thing to happen.
I fear that the same thing will happen with our personal computer where about 10,000 digital pictures are stored. I think I will spend this afternoon burning them all to a few disks so that when the blue screen of death and the death chime come I won't be hysterical.
Sorry you are having such a bad week. Hopefully Mr. IT guy can make it a little better.
NOOOOO! That's terrible!!
My home computer died just before Thanksgiving. My husband (aka our home network admin) said "you are backing up to the network (yes, we have a network for the two of us - don't ask) server regularly, aren't you?" Well - no! Basically, I lost everything, including the captions for an entire year's worth of pictures (still have the pics, just not my clever associated prose). I may never recover from the experience. I *cannot* imagine having the same thing happen at work!
Note to self--go back up all your files now!
Amy, I think we might be having the same day. And I'd like to shoot it. Shoot it dead.
Computers are evil.
and
Like your Project Babalah states, I DO have a lifelong tic about people toughing my nose!! And I was a sickly, allergy/asthma infested child, and I am sure the sucker-thingy was overused!! It all makes sense now!
Computer death is worse than cell phone death--so much worse. I'm sorry. Been there, not quite survived that.
You? Are stronger and have more support.
Oh no! I would die b/c I would SO get fired since I have no computer at home and my work computer is used for play and work. I feel your pain and I'm sorry.
You did make me laugh though.
Hope Noah is feeling better and avoids that nasty, stupid hand mouth foot crap.
Same thing happened to me in October. Network guy found all my stuff, moved it to the "M drive". Now my daughter's report, and the various blog post as well as personal email is all on the "M drive." Thank god I don't have a "porn" file or something. So that was October. Ask me how much I have backed up on the M drive now- just the stuff he did in October. Am nimrod.
Sooooo sorry this happened, but you've just reminded me that while I'm in town I need to speak to my IT people about space on the network drive. As in, I have enough space for approximately two files.
Considering that I've spent six hours of the last 18 I've been in the office with one IT guy or another, I'm sure they'll be thrilled to hear from me. Again.
On a happier note, my ex-boyfriend and I had dinner the other night (yes...don't ask) at Komi. LOVED LOVED LOVED it! Thanks to you (ok, and Mr. DCFoodies) for the fabulous recommendation.
Awhile back, our friendly network guy was helping me with a computer problem. He had to log out as me, fiddle around with stuff, and then log back in as me. He asked me for my password. I blushed and stammered and asked if I could just type it in myself. He tried to not sound huffy, but said I could change it later if I didn't trust him knowing it.
I was just too embarrased for him to know it. I was extremely pi$$ed at my exhusband the day I had to choose a new password and opted for "d!ckhead".
Moral; don't choose a password when you are angry.
And good luck with your computer.
Delurking because of the absolute magnitude of suckituity of your day. I'm not the kind to blow sunshine up someone's ass at the drop of a hat. But dude... Hope you get your stuff back.
I'm so sorry about your computer! I work IT and deal with dead Hard Drives all the time and if it's any consolation, you are definitely not the first person to have a HD die with no backups. Just last week I saved several years worth of someone's email from a drive that went tetes up. Three years!
We have a saying about this... "There are two types of people. Those who have lost data and those who will."
The good news is... recovery is possible. :D Oh, and I can't speak for all of us IT dorks, but I would never ever NEVER look at someone's files. IMHO, it would be a real ethical breach to open up someone's documents. So, unless you have a folder labelled "kiddy porn" or something like that, I think that you're probably safe.
Oh, and ps. So not cool to ask people for their passwords. I would never do that.
After getting diseased with HUNDREDS of viruseseses at my old job, I started saving stuff to disks. But forgetting to label them.
I am a genius.
I could not tell that you had been thrown up on at 4:30 a.m. when you spoke yesterday. Really. I was more surprised that the person you were introducing had been here for a month and I had never seen her. I need to get out of my office more.
As for today, I believe in the power of Helpful Network Guy. He'll get your files back.
yes, i feel the blue screen of death. mine died the day i needed send out our catalog pages to the printers. do what i did.. take a sick day tomorrow.
So sorry about your computer! I wouldn't even think of saving it to the network drive. I'm sorry about your personal things and that you had to divulge your nickname for Noah! I hope it all works out!
WRITE A BOOK, AMY. PLEASE, WRITE A BOOK!!
W R I T E
A
B O O K!! :)
None of this is funny, except that it totally is--the way you wrote it, I mean. One of my favorite Amalah posts. Especially:
"I am going to go lie down in the parking garage for a little while."
Don't actually DO that, of course, but it made me giggle.
oh no. that is not good news. snotty mucus and four am barf sessions are a little less scarey than the broken computer scenario. because you can clean barf without a tech guy seeing your belly.
hope he can retrieve your files (without looking at them).
Oh my gosh-there is so much personal crap on my work computer it's not even funny. I upload all of my photos onto my work computer because it's a mac laptop (and I love macs! and laptops!) and I take it home with me all the time to browse the internet. Yikes! I never thought of the possibility of someone seeing it! I should probably bring some CD's to work and transfer all of that personal stuff off.
"I am going to go lie down in the parking garage for a little while."
And I am going to go back up all my data, which I never. Ever. Think to do until I read about something like this. Please, go home and drink something large and alcoholic.
I sort of take a Unabomberesque approach to data management...
Frigging hysterical. Hope your day gets better.
Computers are ungrateful little bitches.
I had hand, foot, and mouth disease once. When I was in my late 20s. (It's a toddler illness and was going around my niece's daycare.) My doctor had never heard of it and had to go look it up. I had a week of unpleasant gargling with liquid penicillin to prevent the blisters in my mouth from getting infected. Sorry to be gross, but I just wanted to warn you. In case you wanted to pick up a hazmat suit or something.
Will be backing up all my data now - that is before I go home to my child who is at this moment being picked up by ex because? He has the stomach bug that is going like a brush fire in his kindergarten.
'Twill be a vomitous weekend. Am not looking forward to it...
Buy the Helpful Network Guy something expensive. Like Bailey's. I find bribing coworkers is the best way to keep the personal files at work, well, personal.
Wait!!! Helpful Network Guy did NOT just ask you to email a PASSWORD!!! That's one of the seven deadly IT sins. No emailing passwords. He can call you and ask you for it. You can write it on a sticky. You play password charades. But No Emailing Passwords.
You may not have backed up your files, but HNG just compromised the entire company's network security.
Moral high ground goes to ... Amalah. You may officially stop feeling guilty about all those files.
TurtleButtPooperPants....
thats it, isnt it?
Laura - No, but it TOTALLY IS NOW.