Today was special.
Sometimes life remembers you exist and drops some bullshit on your head to keep you honest. I know it is getting late into the first night of this long weekend and just now I am hammering away at these keys, listening to some old Tom Waits, drinking some cold ones and fulfilling my promise to my new stranger friends.
As some of you may remember from class, I lost my steady paycheck this week. No biggie, that place was a living nightmare and a true test of my gumption, but I see it as a win for me. I get a month of full pay, once that dries up I can get some free gov-ment monies in the amount of a bit over half of my former earnings. Hell, I am still happy as can be, I don't have to go there anymore!
But I digress. Today was special, I was reminded that this game ain't fair and, to quote Eastwood, "Deserve got nothin' to do with it." Only if it did… So, with my first Blog entry I am going to discharge my stressful fucking day onto you, just don't let me hear you bellyache this excuse after reading this. Shit, I shouldn't 'ev had to deal with this crap myself.
Gather 'round.
Three full days relieved from my job I decided to back up my handy portible hard drive. I sat down at my desk near 8 A.M. I Reached into my canvas bag, pulled out the drive and plugged it in.
Fuck.
OK, let's go back a few. I bought this drive about 18 months ago. She quickly earned my trust; saved all my work, keep all of my secrets safe and never betrayed me. But, coming from a rough beginning, that was never enough for a guy like me. Trust wasn't something you could rely on, it was just a minor convenience, give it to much and your screwed. So, in this case I had strength in numbers. I keep a backup of my portable friend at the office and another one at home-sweet-home. But, there was no more work; backup number deuce was gone forever.
Back to fuck.
So I plugged in the drive, an error message immediately fires up onto the screen: (and I paraphrase) "Yeah, your fucked." "What?" I yelled. Well, no worries, I thought. I have my backup. Just as I tried to access my fail-safe I got a solid hay-maker to the jaw from our ol' friend Murphy. The drive went south and was completely and totally and absolutely corrupted. That damn Murphy packs a series punch. So, here I am at eightthiryaaaemm, my primary drive is kaput, my backup number two is verboten and my backup number three is kaput. Great.
Alas, no freakin' out yet, I'm a smart and resourceful dude. I began troubleshooting the situation, all scientific-like. Macs are reliable, my mantra, until I hung up the phone with Apple Tech Support, it wasn't my Macbook, it was the drive. Hm, that makes this very worse now. The freakin' out starts seeping in. Nothing on the drive would cost me clients, I didn't have any, but I had a ton of gig-a-bites of bad ass design work on there. Hours and weeks and months of photography, photography made better by Photoshop; illustrations, PDFs, .indd's, ideas, resume. Damn, everything on there I need now more than ever! So here I was, dealt the hand of death, almost TKO'd by Murphy's Law, but with a little bit of Rocky in me I was still standing.
I'm reminded about the resourcefulness of hobos and crack heads when times seem completely hopeless. That always gives me strength. I wasn't going into this long weekend, and perhaps long unenploymentness, with my stuff gone. I tracked down the manufacturer of the drive, found pricing on drive recovery (twelve-hundred god-damn American dollars and up), shitted a brick and called the manufacturer. The time is sixfifteenpeeehm. The bastards want twenty-five bucks to just call them. Shit, I paid it and went through five minutes of online forms and got the number. Within 3 minutes of the guy answering I had total access of my drive, nothing was lost and I beat the crap out of Apollo Creed! ADRIAN!!!!
Sorry. I'm a Philly guy.
Hell people, I was lucky. My stuff was almost gone. I thought it was safe, backup and good to go. Again, luck saved me, but I'm not a victim and refuse to be one.
Now, I am looking forward to a long and light weekend. My stuff is safe and I only have to worry about enjoying life, 'cause I was just smacked silly by reality, but this time my reminder just made this a very special weekend.
Have a great semester and never forget my suffering.
13 comments:
That was certainly an amusing recap of your day. I believe in karma though, so I'm not laughing. lessons can be learned from that...for instance my ass will be going out this weekend to purchase a portable drive. How much do they run? I trust my iMAC, but Murphy is no joke.
I wish had imbibed tonight as well, but I was knee deep in coffee at around 8:30 so I could put a dent in some schoolwork. I love my kids, but 4 year and 16 month old boys don't leave me any other option than to pull late nights to get most of my work done. Ah hell, maybe I'll crack open a Harp right now...
Hey Class,
I was looking at my old (I stress old) blog from Words & Images and remembered this site I had linked in one of my posts. This is great for inspiration...especially if you like street art. They have a rare link on there right now with Picasso painting...live. http://www.woostercollective.com/
Hey, I would suggest you start your research on Amazon. The options are large and you can figure out what would fit your needs, get some free customer feedback and narrow down your search. Once you have a couple you like, Google search them and get some more reviews. I have an Iomega eGo Rugged 160 drive, it is perfect for school, they cost about 90 bucks. At home I have 2 LaCie externals, 500 & 750 gig respectively. The 750 is the one that went hay-wire, but it seems to be fine now. I also have a Time Capsule from Apple, that backs up my entire Macbook Pro. Remember we get a student discount on the Apple store, so that helps. Be sure to look at connectivity such as USB, Firewire 400/800, wireless, etc. to make sure you get something that easily connects to your machine. Happy hunting!
awesome, thanks for the info!
On another note, does anyone know how we are qualifying "repeatable" for this custom typeface? I know what "repeatable" means, but for instance, if I create custom letters with paint or some other medium, I can scan those letter-forms in. Once they are in digital form, I can "repeat" them, but does that qualify for the purposes of the project? What got me thinking about this was Tara's project from last Fall. She carved block letter-forms, but they were repeatable because she had those static block templates for each letter. I guess this question is most appropriate for Amy, but all opinions are welcome. Thanks!
I think you answered your own question, but then thought about it too much.
@CB: It's Amy's call, but I'm inclined to think that if you can scan your letter forms so they're reusable, that would be within the parameters of the project.
@Bobby: Note to self: Purchase another backup drive.
Thanks Tess! I also got an external drive from my father-in-law at no cost. He had a few laying around that he wasn't using. Booyah.
I was glad this cautionary tale had a happy ending.
Old Tom Waits=Closing Time? Or maybe Rain Dogs?
Not very old—Blue Valentine, I believe.
Bobby G.
I feel for you brother. Losing all your shit sucks. And getting it back is money! Looks like you got the best of both worlds all in a few hours. I think I'm gunna have to back up everything i have just incase u mighta spread that invisible bad-luck blog to hard-drive virus that's been going around. I don't want no parts!!
But I am glad to see your good to go now. I've lost some work, but never an entire drive . . . I couldn't even imagine . . .
(P.S. inspite of your job situation, you may want to consider flipping HD's because i have a feeling after your post, everybody's gunna want another one!)
Burning a few DVDs of work as I type. I'm glad you were able to recover your work! Not a good way to start the semester.
Yea stuff goes wrong all the time. There's a bunch of places to backup your stuff: DVDs, CDs, (always 2 copies of each...one never to be touched and the other for file access), Portable flash for the little everyday stuff, your computer's hard drive also for everyday stuff, and a monster portable drive of a terabyte or so for, again untouchable stuff....that is, files that will only be accessed in an emergency. I say this 'cause files that are used a lot and travel between different systems picking up different germy virus' and CD's acquiring the usual scratch and chip here and there are more likely to go "caput"... oh, and that monster terabyte drive: sleep with that under your pillow and if you're really worried, one under your seat in your car...perhaps one in a bank lock-box??? But the perfect place to keep your tera-drive!!! Fort Knox!!! Ok ok, i digress... my point: there's no limit to how much your can back up your files. The level of security/paranoia is up to you ;)
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