Did you know you should turn off your laptop before you put it in your computer bag? Or at least hibernate it. I knew that. But, I forgot.

I just closed the lid and put my computer in my bag. It was only thirty minutes later when I took it out. It was very hot. I opened it and the screen was blue. Then I forced it to shut down. My computer was having a heart attack, and instead of allowing it to relax, I killed it. F2 and F12 didn’t work.

Hopefully Best Buy’s Doctors will be able to bring it back to life.

Hello again,

I just got back from Best Buy. The store opened at 10 a.m. I was the first car in the parking lot at 9:30. A few more cars pulled in front of the store at 9:53 a.m. I was not going to let anyone get in-line in front of me. At 9:59 I stood in front of the store in the rain waiting for them to let me in. First in line to see the computer doctor.

The hard drive is toast. Burnt toast. So burnt there is nothing on it. They offered to have a Hard Drive Detective look at it. Maybe later, but not today.

Luckily I bought the Super Duper protection plan at Best Buy. They will fix it for me. They have to air lift it to another Best Buy store, and it won’t come home for 10 day to 2 weeks. There aren’t any visiting hours. I can’t even send flowers.

At home I have a desk top computer. That is what I am writing on now. Writing every day has become a habit. One I don’t want to break.

I asked my friends how they back up their computers. They suggested DropBox, an external hard-drive, Crashplan and MozyHome.

Are you prepared for disaster? Computers will break, they are machines.

You are not a machine. You have a heart and a brain and feelings. When something bad happens you get to cry. I thought about crying this morning when the agent at Best Buy said, “There is nothing on your machine.”  But why cry over burnt toast? I mean really. I can’t do back in time and change what I did. If I could go back in time, I would buy stock in Apple, not shut off my computer.

I called to tell the Best Buy agent I couldn’t find the back-up disk.

“Agent Smith here. May I help you?”

“Agent Hodges here. The emergency back-up disc can not be found. We must abort the mission and ship the computer away.”

I still have my brain, I can write more stories, and take more photographs. Pooh, my cat, who I am a typist for, may fire me. I haven’t told him yet I lost a lot of photographs of him.

Right now, on my hard-drive is nothing. Nothing. Some of my files were saved on Drop-box and on Google-drive. And some of my photographs were backed up onto an external hard-drive.

I will have a plan when I get my computer back. Perhaps I should give her a name. Maybe if she has a name I will remember to turn her off. She will be backed up, at least once a day, and maybe twice.

Are you prepared for disaster? Is your computer backed up?

Please tell me in the comments.

p.s. I drove to Virginia last night with my oldest daughter, Piper, to pick up Kathleen Caron. Tomorrow the three of us are driving to Nashville Tennessee for The Storyline Conference. Thankfully Piper is kind. She will share her computer with me. Kathleen is kind too. I just haven’t asked her to share yet.

p.s.s. We will be in the car for ten hours today. So, I don’t know when I will get to chat with you. But I look forward to talking tonight.

All the best,

xo

Pamela