Friday, December 24, 2010

The Santa Curse? - Is it REALLY, or Just a Lesson Learned?

On Monday morning (YES! This past Monday!), my life shattered and fell into multiple pieces... Pieces that I don't know if they can be restored or not.

What happened? My external hard drive crashed. I know this might not be a big deal for some of you... But it totally is/was for me. You see... my WHOLE life was on that drive. Every document that I've written and/or wanted to save, scanned (instead of copied!) items to keep on record, a 1000-page cookbook that I've been copying/pasting recipes to (AND making changes with notations), my kids' school papers, my school (college) papers, and pictures. Did you catch that last one? I said "PICTURES!!!"

That is over 8 years' worth of digital photographs, since I got my first digital camera! That is half of my older girls' lives and my 5-year-old's whole life. Sure... I have some printed, but that is nothing in comparison as to what was stored there.

What? Didn't I have them on CD? Uh... no.  Didn't I have them on my original hard drive and use my external as my back-up? Uh... no, again. Look, there are so many questions you could ask me... but in the end, the answer is going to be the same. Yes! I was S-T-U-P-I-D, stupid. Yes! I now know all of these things that I coulda/shoulda/didn't do. Can it be restored? That we shall see.

Currently, our most recent computer dude checked it out and said that he couldn't do it, that it wasn't a simple fix like a cable or something, that we would have to be referred to someone else, and it could cost a lot of money, that it depended how important it was to me. REALLY? How important is this to me? It was my whole frickin' LIFE!

And so... we're going to get a couple of estimates and hope/pray someone (anyone) can fix it/restore it for us long enough to make (SEVERAL) backups.

But in the end, we need to ask ourselves... Is this the Santa Curse?

"Huh?" you ask. Yep. I said it. The Santa Curse. Last year, hubs (who wasn't too experienced with ANY camera, let alone digital), got a new Canon PowerShot. We had just taken Santa photos and I had him take sneaky set-up photos (you know... the kind where they're all candid and fun and stuff), because, well... those are the kind that I really like.  Cute pics they were, too. We got home, and before he had me download the pics... he decided to see what "format the card" meant. Yep... you guessed it. New Santa pics wiped out. Needless to say, he learned his lesson.

Enter this past Sunday (the day before the doomed Monday when I lost all my pics). I downloaded this year's candid Santa set-up photos (click on this to see that story and the final pic story here) on Sunday.

Did you catch that? Last year I didn't get to even download the candid pics, and they were gone. This year, I got to download them, and do nothing with them, because... Enter "Monday". and Woosh! while trying to upload pics onto a photo site (you know... to print them for a Christmas present or two...), all of a sudden, the stupid computer/site doesn't recognize or even register the external hard drive. Uh, oh!

Panic set in... and I tried to do everything/anything I could think of to recognize it. And I mean everything. I even cried, and that didn't work. Didn't work. Nothing worked. And like I said before, the current computer dude can do nothing. So, we'll wait.

Patience is hard for me. And I have to breathe in slowly and deeply. But, I cried. I still tear up. And this is why I wonder if it's a curse... The Santa Curse... or just Fate. Fate telling me that I need to shut the hell up and quit procrastinating and taking things for granted, because... well, ya know! I do that.

*Note to the above: There are no pictures to describe how the hell I feel... words cannot describe them. My lesson learned: Always have back-up to any method of photo and/or document storage you use. That is all.

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