Friday December 2nd, 2011 - Fox Lake, IL Just my luck. I’d been working steadily for the past few months to update my computer files in preparation for next year, and intended to back myself up yesterday December 1st. I’d spent dozens of hours getting everything updated, and I thought I’d done a fine job. Wouldn’t you know it, yesterday was the day I managed to download a virus and it was all over but the weeping. BOOM - out went the lights. I saw my professional life flash in front of me as my screen went crazy right in front of my eyes, and it left a sinking feeling. What slaves to technology we all are. I’ve had this happen before, and it’s been nothing but pure torture of the cruel and unusual kind. My whole life is inside that little box, but I can’t access any of it because some socially inept evil genius in Guam decided it might be fun to create a program that frustrates the hell out of strangers halfway around the world. Do people actually get pleasure out of knowing they’ve caused major inconvenience for someone else they don’t even know? That wouldn’t give me pleasure. If I’m going to be a pest, I want it to have a purpose. I’ve got a long list of weenies I wouldn’t mind annoying, but it doesn’t include perfect strangers. This is an epic hassle of enormous proportions. It’s not like I was downloading farm animal porn, or anything like that. I had received a legit looking email saying I had a package waiting for me that wasn’t able to be delivered to my post office box. Well, I have a post office box and I had been expecting a package. I fell for the gag, and when I opened it I knew I’d been stung. My anti-virus protection put a warning on the screen, but apparently it was too late by then. Everything went crazy and then everything went dark. I tried everything I knew, which isn’t much more than lots of yelling and smacking, and took it over to my friend Shelley who has helped me before. She and her husband Bob are very sharp when it comes to computers, and they’ve been very kind to help me on several occasions. Usually, one of them can figure it out but this time they were both stumped. I could tell by the looks on their faces this one was serious. Now I’m really screwed. Potentially. I did back myself up a few months ago, so I will at least be able to get some of my files back. But all that hard work I’ve put in these last few weeks will be totally wasted, and there’s no way I can duplicate it from memory alone. On the bright side, I did purchase a spare iMac computer from my friend Dave Rudolf a while back. He upgraded his system because he records music, but the one he sold me has more computer than I’ll ever need. All I need is a place to store my creative work safely. I’m not the sharpest when it comes to figuring out computers as a whole, and I’ll freely admit it. I started on a PC, so that’s what I know - virus glitches and all. Everyone I know who has a Mac loves it, and they’ve all told me I’ll never go back to PC once I get myself comfortable on a Mac. I won’t be comfortable at all until I’m able to get my data back.
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