Thursday, November 23, 2006

thankful.

this thanksgiving has a special meaning to me. not because of food or family or excess or health. but because of sheer luck--or maybe divine intervention.
on november 16th i went to madison, wi to spend a couple of days working directly with my advisor on pulling together the last finishing touches on my dissertation. i figured we would get enough done that i would be able to finish it in short order and begin my powerpoint presentation designs for the defense meeting. we did accomplish more than i could have anticipated. the version of the dissertation that i had at 2pm on saturday, november 18th while sitting in michelangelo's coffee house with my wonderful friend yura, was one that i was incredibly proud of. i felt as if i could indeed see a light at the end of the tunnel. problem was, it was not the light of the great outdoors, but rather, the light of a giant iron behemoth of a train bearing right down on all my work. my laptop crashed right in the middle of my work. initially, i thought i had just run out of battery juice. back in my hotel room, i realized that was not the case, but still did not anticipate it being a "real" crash. i figured i'd get back home and get the repair of the purported "missing or damaged" file so it would be back up and running and i'd be back on track. uhmmmm..........no. i got home sunday night, november 19th and stayed up until 3am trying desperately to find some simple fix for what ailed my laptop. monday came and i sought out the help of the geek squad. they gave me some hope to hang onto. they said they would try to retreive as much data as possible from the fried hard drive before doing the erase and reinstall. i got a call right as my evening class was beginning. they let me know there was no data to retreive. my dissertation was G.O.N.E. over 100 pages of MY LIFE. Gone. Poof. Buh-bye. yes, i did cry. i let out horrible gaspy sobs in the stairway of the building. i managed to compose myself enough to get through my class. there were a few moments when i came dangerously close to losing it, but i managed to hang on. so why OH why would i be especially thankful right about now? did i have the dissertation on a back up disk? uhhhh. nope. did i have a copy of the dissertation uploaded to a storage site? uhhhhh. negative. did i email the dissertation to myself? uhhh... uh-uh. did i have a copy of the dissertation on the apple laptop? mmm..... still no. hard copy.....you know the answer to that by now. stupid? yes, that pretty much sums it up. so what makes me thankful? i'm thankful because although i lost probably the BEST work of my life thus far, there was a previous version just prior to the madison trip revisions floating around in cyberspace. i had emailed a copy to my advisor and to a research consultant just prior to the trip to madison. i am so thankful that i don't have to start from scratch. had that been the case, it is quite possible that i would be contemplating flinging myself from the tallest building in town, which ironically, is the building that i work in.
i am so very THANKFUL.
the craptop is now fixed. i now have multiple electronic versions of the dissertation in progress. i have the data files in multiple locations. i am currently beginning to attempt to recreate the madison revisions. my goal is to finish them by monday. i gave up my thanksgiving plans because i just want this nightmare put to bed. and i will. this will end. and i have learned many valuable lessons.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Holy crap! You must have been soooo distraught over this! I too, would have been ready to fling myself from the tallest building -- I am thankful YOU did not! *smoochies* Happy Thanksgiving!

Anonymous said...

You're a DALTON......you can overcome anything.....even flaptops....*grin*

Love you little girl...and your old brother to....if you're reading this.

UNK

ƒåυνέ said...

Good Lord...
You are a stronger woman then I, Miss Jacque.

Good to see you back!

ƒåυνέ said...

And I've tagged you on my blog sweetie. Maybe I can drag you back into posting? LOL