Karma Police

Let me just serve as the cautionary tale - backup your work, my lovelies, for you never know when you might be greeted, as I was this morning, with the dreaded Blue Screen of Death.  Forget the momentum I'd acquired over the last several days, writing writing writing, in anticipation of the end of the writers' strike (for the show's been cancelled so I'm looking for a new gig).  Forget all the lovely good thoughts in mind of wickedly smart dialog or maybe just wickedly okay dialog or perhaps even just stuff that people could maybe say in real life, stroke victims excepted, and even them, sure, why not? 

But all of that is gone - gone! - as my laptop sits, alone, in the back of Central Computer on Howard Street.  Sure, the guy back there has at best a tenuous hold on the English language, his grip loosening more still when confronted with a choice of prepositions - of, over, about? - but he seemed completely unfazed at my predicament: this computer tells me that I have a corrupt or missing registry file.  Why?  Why why why?  He mumbled something comforting, along the lines of he'd seen it before which made me feel better but then he put the fear of death into/above/around me by asking if - and I quote because you too shall know the fear - "There was any data on this computer that you want to keep." 

There are not enough exclamation points in the universe, known, unknown or dreamt up by that autistic kid in St. Elsewhere, to convey the horror I experienced in that moment. But I kept my shit together, people.  I kept my cool. 

Yes, in fact there are several files that I care very deeply about/around/of.  Please, can you copy them for me?

At press time, he's going to try to copy my entire My Documents folder, but he didn't have any idea how long it would take to fix the laptop or even - gulp - if it IS fixable.  But as I stew and freak out about the script that was very nearly finished or the various treatments I'd worked on over the last month or so, and how the strike is over and I should have stuff ready to go soon, and how my agent and managers are looking for PRODUCT from me, I think the previously unthinkable: 

I love the laptop, don't get me wrong, and I'm practically whispering as I type this lest it hear me from the shelf in the back of the store and shove off this digital coil, but: I don't care about the hardware.  I just want my data.

Incidentally, I've no one but myself to blame - I backed everything up about a month ago and everytime I do, I feel like a putz for wasting my time, which really makes no sense, like resenting putting on a seatbelt because you've never gotten into an accident.   Yet I'd looked at my external hard drive repeatedly over the last couple of weeks and thought - well, I guess I figured 'what's the point?'  Point taken. 

Sigh. 

Come on little laptop.  You can make it, buddy.

p.s. A huge thank you to the GF for lending me her laptop so I can continue to work, and to the folks at the Writers' Store (and purveyors of Final Draft - screenwriting software) who talked me down off the ledge and assured me that I could just download the software again to the GF's computer, no worries - and no additional license fee. 

Comments

[fig]

I'm glad to hear that little Laptop has recovered. Extra mazel tov, all around.

Sorry to hear that your show was cancelled, especially since so much of actually being on the show must have dissolved into the ether of the strike. Now that you've been on a writing staff, though, do you feel more like you're in the groove of the business, and that it'll be easier to find a new position?

Anyway, I wish you luck.

(Oh. And just so this comment doesn't appear to be coming completely from some creepy person in left field: I'm the person who commented wayyyy earlier in the year, asking about how you got into the biz.)