Saturday, May 7, 2011

The Back-up Post

I'm really annoyed with myself this week. To be more precise, I'm really annoyed with my computer. More specifically, my Word program.

A few months ago a had worked on a lengthy post and somehow lost my work. I then started to type out my lengthier posts in Word and then cut/paste them into my blog. On Wednesday I was working on a post about reality television. I finished it after about 1 1/4 hours and then did a spell check. For some reason the program locked up on a paragraph. I was then given an option to retrieve my work, and I did. Now, you'd think that the Fez Guy would hastily move that story to his blog or at least save the dickens out of it. Nope. I tried the spell check again and it locked up again on the same paragraph (it must have thought that it was complete crap). I tried saving the document but this time I must have done something different and then Poof, it was gone.

Those who know me well will attest to the fact that I don't often swear (I leave that up to the boy). He swears enough for all of us. In fact, he swears so much that when he goes to interview with the Canadian navy when he hits 18 they will admit him right away. He could be the profanity instructor to the entire Atlantic fleet. He'd probably make admiral in a few weeks...OK, so I'm off on a bit of a tangent.

Me as a boy...
My reality TV post is now 'Lost' in Cyberspace. Speaking of 'Lost'...the deadline for the Lost on the Rock 2011 flash fiction contest is the end of day tomorrow. You may already know this as Laurita, myself, and our friends have been Tweeting the heck out of this in an attempt to get more entries. It's a mere 1000 words. Give it a try. Take next week's #fridayflash story (if it's already written) and send it to us! (as long as it fits the 'Lost' contest theme). You can read the contest information here. The post about the prizes is here. We will take a couple of weeks to read, re-read and then rank the stories. The top four will be sent a few interview questions to answer and return. The interviews and writer's photo will appear at our blogs the week after the Canadian Victoria Day weekend. If you are selected in the top four and don't want to include a photo, that's OK too...I'll just sketch up a likeness of that person with my handy drafting crayon...

Yeah, the death of my last blog post had me a bit bummed out this week, but my friend Cathy Olliffe sent along this video from tooshocking.com to cheer me up. The cute dog video then led me to this video which, as a former dog catcher who had to deal with obnoxious owners, really put a smile on my face. I don't think that I need to say that alcohol and dog collars don't mix...

12 comments:

Laura Eno said...

Ouch! I feel for you...well, kinda. YOU HAVEN'T LEARNED YET TO SAVE AFTER EVERY SENTENCE??!! Jeesh. <-- That's a cuss word, disguised in deference to the blue rinse brigade.

K.C. Shaw said...

Ouch about losing your posts! That reminds me...I haven't backed up the writing I did Thursday and that means it's about time for my computer to self-destruct. Excuse me a moment....

Katey said...

Ugh, dude, I feel your pain. That's the WORST.

Aww, you were cute as a boy. Dickensian cute, even :D

Mark Kerstetter said...

I once lost a 200 page document I had been working on for months. I walked around in dazed disbelief for a couple of days. Then I cried. Now I'm religious about backing up files.

Fox Lee said...

That poor dog *LOL*

Alan W. Davidson said...

Laura- Har! Yeah, I'm an idiot. I'm sure that the 'blue rinse brigade' are going to read between the lines and substitute their own words.

KC- Thanks, and by all means rush off and do that.

Katey- The kids used to call me Oliver. Yeah, Ok, so you saw through my ruse...

Mark- Woah, that's a shocker. I'm officially over MY pain. I don't think that I'd have recovered from that. I don't think that I've found religion yet, but getting closer.

Nat- Yeah, those guys had that coming to them. All fun and games until...

Laurita said...

Having an IT husband, the eleventh commandment in our house is "Thou shalt backup your data". But it's really, really hard to remember to back up when you're in the zone.

Can't wait to start on those Lost on the Rock entries. I think we have room for a few more, what do you say? One whole day left to enter...

Cathy Olliffe-Webster said...

It's 9:05 p.m. Am exhausted from weekend of hard fishing. Have an idea for story but haven't started... does "end of day" count as "Ontario end of day?" Cause if it doesn't, omg, the end of the day has almost arrived in Nfld....

Aaron Polson said...

I can only echo what others have said. Ouch. These are some of the perils of the digital age.

Danielle Birch said...

I hate losing work.

PS I probably swear as much as your son.

Alan W. Davidson said...

Laurita- I guess that you got your wish and a few extra stories arrived. The game is afoot...

Cathy- Hmm...was yours the story that I found in my mailbox when I got up the morning AFTER the contest?

Aaron- Yeah, you'd think that I'd know better, being a draftsman who works digitally all of the time...

Danielle- That's funny. Never pegged you as 'potty mouthed'. You'll have to an audio reading for us with lots of swearing (except you'll have that cool accent).

Unknown said...

Here's my own lil' tip, Alan: I rarely write anything in WORD. Sure I import stuff but the bulk of my writing is donw in NOTEPAD, the crappy lil' thowaway program in Windows.

Why do I use it?

It's small... Hence, won't get bogged down and NEVER freezes.

It's a straight text editor so whenever you dump the text anywhere else, it will be clean and format free.

Try it ... You just may dig it.