Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Curse of the Techno Slave

A while back, Pooks posted about an organizational aid called "Get It Done." Apparently, this system is a great help in cleaning one's desk.

I ignored most of this, but I seem to recall these instructions -- after a certain number of steps, the Organized Person reaches the point where she has in her hands stuff that either needs to be filed or thrown away. And the important thing to remember is that it DOESN'T MATTER which one she does. File-Throw Away-Same Deal. And I may not be remembering that correctly but,

That was the thought I clung to when my laptop had a catastrophic hard drive failure and all the lovely bits and nuances of crap, I mean, very important research material from all over the World Wide Web suddenly vanished into the electronic ether.

And the bits that didn't immediately disappear, peeked at me from places viewable but not retrievable. Stupid computer.

I curled in the fetal position over the arm of my desk chair for so long I had to visit the chiropractor.

But, Brothers and Sisters, I am now so very organized. Not one miscellaneous scrap of any-thing, any-where.

Bad computer. Bad.

3 comments:

  1. Ouch!

    Getting Things Done is the name of the book. And yeah, he said -- when you aren't sure whether to keep something or not, instead of setting it aside to decide later (along with all the other stuff that is growing into a mountain that you aren't sure what do do with) --

    Decide once, do I feel better if I accept that anything that important, I'll be able to retrieve some other way so I'm going to toss this? Or do I feel better knowing it's available, so I'm going to file this?

    Once you decide, then you just do that same thing eery time you have that kind of decision to make.

    In your case, the computer made the decision for you!

    Wow, computers these days are getting pretty sassy, aren't they?

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  2. Gah, what a nightmare! You poor thing.
    I'm glad you're all better now.

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  3. Stupid computer.

    I thought about blogging about what other machine do we become so emotionally entwined with, but decided I didn't want to know. I also didn't want to find out I'm the only one who gets really crabby when the computer doesn't work.

    Macs are not supposed to forget where they put important files. Windows does every once in a while, but Macs are NOT supposed to do that. I may have helped a little.

    Anyway, the little Mac and I are back on speaking terms and all the important stuff I bookmarked is either gone for good or waiting to be rediscovered. Guess I got that done.

    What I really miss are the emails I saved in the email program files which went kaput with everything else.

    Isn't that odd? It's not like they were beribboned lacy letters I could clutch to my dying bosum, while proclaiming,

    She used to write ...

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