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The Big Mac Attack
A Hard (Drive) Lesson to Learn
A few years ago, I had a Big Mac attack. I preface this by stating I wasn’t parked out under the golden arches, pigging out on pseudo-meat inside a sesame-seed plastic bun. No, my Big Mac attack was all about my computer, and despite what I thought were good daily work habits, my laptop succumbed to Central Processor Arrest. Translation: it had failed to supply adequate circulation to its hard drive muscle and surrounding bits and bytes.
It happened, as these things often do, quite suddenly. I had been sitting in front of my laptop, wasting valuable writing minutes by watching a hilarious YouTube video of a skateboarding bulldog, when my screen suddenly flatlined and turned grey. I did all the usual things: I logged off. I logged on. I hard crashed, rebooted, and performed CPR (Cursed. Panicked. Ranted.)
Alas, no pulse.
This wasn’t good. My first draft was on there, and, like the moron I was, I had not been backing it up regularly. I had not “clouded” my stuff, either. Truth be known, I had not backed it up at all. I know! (I have no excuses, but I’m not discussing that particular issue here.)
I’m not exactly a Luddite — I can find my way around most computers — but I am by no means comfortable with their guts. Even the terminology freaks me out: RAM and MOTHERBOARDS and…
