Finis

There are a number of things that terrify people: spiders, darkness, getting stranded on a desolate road in East Texas.  But, in this modern age, one thing horrifies people more than seeing another Starbucks pop up in the neighborhood – your computer crashing.  For decades we’ve been led to believe technology is our mechanical savior; it will make our lives easier and more productive at all times.  And, to some extent, that’s true.

But when that dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” materializes, it’s worse than learning you need to shop again for homeowner’s insurance.  That’s what happened to me recently, when my 11-year-old desktop PC apparently decided it had enough of me and my cyber antics and took its own life.  It explains why I didn’t post anything last weekend.  I try to be consistent.  Of course, I tried to be consistent in pursuing my adult film career some 20 years ago – but obviously nobody had faith in my sexy technical writer persona.

Anyway…the old bastard died (the PC), and I was stranded.  Fortunately, I still had my father’s desktop PC, and a long-time neighbor/friend helped me yank out the hard drive from mine and showed me how to install it temporarily into this other one.  I still wasn’t able to pull any of my old data off of it, but I’m glad I back everything up onto a zip drive once a month.

So not all was lost.

All of my writings were on that zip drive, which – I guess to any writer – is one of those lifesaving moments.  Kind of like realizing there is at least one place that still sells your favorite wine.

And a writer without their collection of stories is like…well, a porn star without lube!