Thinking of London...

I'm relieved to see everyone from my flist who lives in London checking in to let folks know they are okay. Yesterday at work, I was checking the news all day long, though I didn't log onto LJ until I got home.

London is one of my favorite places in the part of the world that I've visited. It's dear to me in so many ways. The first time I visited, I took the boat to Dover, and as the train zipped through the green, rolling hills being grazed by fluffy sheep I had this overwhelming feeling that I was coming home.

And now, I think about all those people who won't be coming back to their homes.

My Hideous Week...

I meant to be around more this week, to participate in the firestorm that erupted around JACK. I figure most of you have already heard about it via kirbycrow or caras_galadhon or makesmewannadie or ithiliana. I hope I'll get caught up on it this weekend.

On Tuesday night, my desktop died. Programs started choking, and when I shut down to see if that helped, I couldn't get back to Windows. I was getting Windows registry errors, and not even reinstalling Windows helped. Eight years worth of writing, of pics, of chats, of work, and I couldn't get to any of it.

My desktop is old. It runs Windows 98, and I tried backing stuff up on a flash drive back in March, but my Windows was too old to run the driver even when I downloaded a Windows 98 SE (the only version they had) patch. The DVD drive is a player, not a writer. So no good way existed to move the 423 MB of files I'd accrued.

I don't think that I need to mention that I do not have $100/hour to pay a computer tech to help me. So I did the only thing I could: I hauled my desktop full of porn to work to see if IT could help me.

They tried to get a flash drive to work once they got Windows up. Nothing doing. They tried hooking up an external hard drive. Unsuccessful. Then they lost the floppy drive and had to shut down. It took all day to get the thing to boot back to Windows again, and I've been spending the last two days moving a chunk of the 423 MB of files off the PC one floppy disc at a time.

That's right: one floppy at a time. It is hideous and horrible. But it is better than losing everything.

I've had to sacrifice some things that were too big to move. I've cleaned out a lot of old stuff that was no damned good. And this weekend, I'm going to learn to burn CDs and back everything up. Multiple times.

I will also rest, since I've lost peaceful sleep over this, and go to the movies and loaf a bit.

Loaf... Mmmmm...