I am still persisting with my rubbish Sony Vaio, despite my
well catalogued problems with it and recent warnings that
it might be about to go on the blink. It's almost like I am enjoying the danger of losing everything. I keep meaning to go and buy a Mac and get all my files safely transferred across, but I am lazy and finding it hard to get any of my chores done. Plus the longer the Vaio hangs on, even though the sound doesn't work and there's a big fat line down the screen, the more I slightly love it. It's crap, it's always being crap, but I have become accustomed to its facets and I am going to miss it. I had deleted huge chunks of stuff a couple of months ago which seemed to have resolved the memory issues, but in the last couple of days those have returned - God knows what is filling up the hard drive, probably some Al Quaida plot, using my laptop as a proxy - and then this morning I turned on the computer and though it booted up OK, it started trying to reload certain programmes and when I checked my files and outlook express and itunes, everything had gone. My heart sank. Why have I been such an idiot? Why hadn't I taken the warnings and got off my arse and got a new computer?
Apart from losing the addresses of everyone who had donated to the programme (which I could find on my googlemail webpage at a slight inconvenience), I have everything backed up, except most of my iTunes stuff, but the inconvenience was too much to bear. I was also meant to be rewriting the YCCYF treatment - luckily other people had a copy, but if my computer wasn't working it would be a further pain in the arse to track that down.
I am a cock.
Then as it started trying to reload some programme or other I decided to take a chance, turn off the computer and hope that everything would return when I turned it on. Doesn't sound too likely to work, but I was desperate.
Incredibly it worked.
Everything was back up and running and had returned from the void.
Really I should take this as a sign that I should get straight down to Regent Street and stop putting off the inevitable and get some nice man to transfer all my stuff to a new computer, buy a back up hard drive and never have to worry again. But doubtless I will keep playing chicken with my Vaio, partly for the gambling sheer Hell of it and partly because I have begun to love this big heap of dirty, broken, flawed computer. It has been nothing but trouble to be, but I am attached to it. That's pretty much how we get into any relationship. And my laptop is more of a friend to me than any human. I have spent more time with it than any other person or thing in the last two years.
I know this is hubris and I know I will regret not using tomorrow afternoon to go to the shops, but I bet I don't go.
Got my treatment done anyway and it has been sent off to the suits who have power over my future. Now all we can do is wait.