Unnngghhh.
In an ego-crushing move today, as if the gods themselves had finally noticed my hubris and one of them was getting up to get a snack anyway and so decided to kick my computer on the way out, just as I put the last touch on an elaborate commission, in the middle of signing my name no less, my computer froze.
It happens. I was asking too much of it anyway, juggling files and printing and so forth. I restarted, expecting a brief check for integrity, and then normal functionality. And was instead greeted with strange happenings, and finally, that digital bugbear, the Blue Screen. And then another Blue Screen. And then it could no longer find my hard drives. And then it could no longer boot at all.
The Bluebird of Happiness departed, and the Blue Screen of Death because my companion for the next nine or ten hours, as my husband tried increasingly elaborate methods of salvaging my machine, and eventually just took the hard drive out, installed it in his machine to save my files (The important thing, thank god!) and then reinstalled Windows on mine. So I have spent much of the day, when I had planned to do some work, maybe send off some vital e-mail, and then lounge about playing games, first in a state of low-grade panic over my files, and then finally running through more wizards than a D&D marathon with a keg in the basement.
The irony is that my husband was gonna quit smoking today. I made him start again in order to get my computer functional. I love him dearly and don’t want him to die a horrid gurgling death, but finding my tech guy in fetal position going “I can’t think straight. I don’t know.” does not get the machine fixed, and half an American Spirit will get him tearing into my computer’s guts with a smile on his face and a song in his heart. This probably makes me a bad person, but I don’t care–he would’ve started again at GDC anyhow, and this way I get my files back. Later this month, perhaps, armed with copious amounts of gum, he can tackle quitting again. God willing, the computer will not pick that day to explode again.
