I’m taking in positive thinking. Really, I am. Because yesterday I was happy. Got a new harddrive for my computer. 250 gig. Wow! The thoughts of days gone by came back. How am I going to fill this thing? In truth, I know how. I work in graphics and a lot of my images can be huge in file size. This drive, though, would be good to put all of my artwork and writing on and ease some pressure off of my 80 gig.
Or so I thought.
Simple situation. Thinking back, I should have started the backup first.
I set the jumpers so the drives would act as master/slave. All good. Checked the bios, there they were. Nice. Began the boot process. For the next three hours. And I began to realize, my 80 gig decided now was a good time to start dying. So, there I was. The sudden realization that four years worth of artwork and writing, was now lost. Gone into the void that takes computer equipment. No hard copies, no backups. Shame on me.
Not all of it was lost, fortunately. I have a good number of backups on my laptop, not 100% of it, but a good amount of it. But there were some projects that took a great deal of time in creating that I would have to start all over again. The pain of thinking about that began settling in. 
Along with a mix of emotions. Anger, worry, fear. At the point where I think I was going to start to cry, I realized that now might be a good time for that upgrade I had always thought about getting. My computer was three years old, after all. I was pushing it pretty hard, and I had always thought that I should start planning a new system. I’d build something that would be able to stick around for a few years.
That got pushed up to this morning. I walked to the local computer store, and told them what I needed a new system to do, and what I wanted a new system to do. It has to be able to run Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign. It has to have a decent amount of space. DVD burner. And it has to be able to handle a good number of games. Granted, a lot of those games are older, but they’ll rip along nicely with the new system I have planned. I remember playing Neverwinter Nights on an Athlon 600. I can’t wait to see it on an Athlon 5000. Duo core, 2.7 gig processing power. Complete with a GeForce video card that will make my old one look like a Sunday driver doing 25 on the freeway.
And, there is a good chance I can recover my backups off the old drive. It’s not completely dead. It just won’t boot. Here’s hoping.
So yes, I am looking at a lot of positives. I have my laptop. I have a roof over my head. I have food. I have electricity. I have my job. And spring is not that far away. Life is starting to look a lot better when I take those things into perspective. And when I read funny captioned cat pictures.
Until next time…
…Keep ’em flyin’.
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