Saturday, May 8
Computer running a little slow. Hmmm…
Sunday morning, May 9
Nothing. Force quit. Restart. Nothing. White screen. Mad, frantic, hunt for instruction manual. Entire content of bookshelves and desk drawers on floor. Troubleshooting guide. White screen. Now file folder with question mark and sickening click, click, click sound.
Sunday afternoon, May 9
Still nothing. Discover 2002 iBook in closet. Realize I have time machine. Plug external drive into antique laptop. Sick feeling in stomach disappears.
Sunday late afternoon, May 9
Realize computer has not been plugged into the external drive since Tuesday. All power points, handouts, and materials created for new class being taught this week are gone.
Monday, May 10
Day spent frantically recreating class material. Finish at 3:00pm. 2 hrs before class. One plus, retro clip art for power point presentation.
Tuesday, May 11
Take computer to closet sized and only Mac store in Rio. In Portuguese explain, “My computer is not working. It is very, very bad. It does not wake up. I need my computer. I love my computer. Please help me.” Tech guy says my insurance is still good through July. Any repairs or replacements will be free. Silver lining.
Tuesday night
Power out in building. Climb 12 flights of stairs. Antique laptop battery does not hold a charge. Cannot work on class materials.
Wednesday, May 12
Still recreating lost class material. Printer runs out of ink. No spare cartridges.
Thursday, May 13
Return to Mac store. Due to limited knowledge of both computers and Portuguese, the diagnosis must be given face to face. The hard disk is dead and all material gone. “You have time machine, right?” New hd in 10-15 days.
Friday, May 14
Finally catch up on class materials.
Saturday, May 15
Try to catch up on Daily Show. Adobe needs updated quicktime. Quicktime needs updated firefox. Firefox needs OS 10.3 or later. My 2002 iBook has 10.2. Oh, just forget it.
Friday, May 21
Tech guy calls. Computer is ready. Actual jumping for joy.
Saturday, May 22
Pick up computer. Pick up printer ink. Informed by computer during startup that it cannot sync with time machine because of different operating systems. Spend afternoon loading OS Leopard, Snow Leopard, Bobcat and Cheshire cat onto computer.
Sunday, May 23
Download all episodes of Lost, House and Grey’s Anatomy for the last three weeks. Click ok when time machine asks to backup for this computer. Of course, isn’t that what it’s been doing for the last three years?
Monday, May 24
Spend day working on class materials.
Tuesday, May 25
Finally, get back to syncing new HD with time machine. Sync. Nothing changes. My old data is not restored. Open time machine and see four folders. The earliest date is two days earlier. Heart stops.
Tuesday morning
Complete and total breakdown. Spend the next two hours berating myself for losing three years of writing, photos, videos, music. All gone.
Tuesday lunchtime
Go through 2000 sent emails to recover drafts of essays and short stories. Bursting into tears throughout process.
Tuesday afternoon
Allow rational thought to once again control actions. Look more closely at time machine folder. 1 out of 36 files selected. Hmmm. Scroll down past blank space and discover all backups for previous two years. Spend the next hours berating myself for being such an f’ing moron.
Wednesday, May 26
Cannot look at a computer.
Thursday, May 27
Take computer and external drive to Mac store.
Me (in Portuguese): “I cannot sync together time machine and computer. Needed to get snow leopard. Now, it has snow leopard but I cannot sync.”
Tech guy: “We don’t do that. Call this man and he can help.”
Me: “What do you do?”
Tech guy: “Only hardware.”
Me: Pause “Is Brazil going to get a real Mac store?”
Tech guy: “No, probably not. Here’s the guy’s card.”
Friday, May 28
Suck it up. Do some research. And sync the gd computer myself. Try to update blog. Internet is out for the entire neighborhood…Consider giving up all technology continuing to blog by carrier pigeon. Mother f&#)&@!!!
Monday, May 31
Computer is synced. Internet is working. Printer has ink. New blog post going up.
