Time to Hum Taps

*
Any time the children went to a school carnival, I could count on them coming up to me all excited about the goldfish they won at one of booths. I would stare through the clear plastic bags knotted at the top at the poor little creatures swimming around in the water. I felt bad for the little fish, because I knew their time on earth was short.

We invariably took the goldfish cache for the day home, put them in our fishbowl, changed out the water regularly and fed the little darlings morning and night. However, within a week, they all had gone the way of the world.

Our funeral services were short but solemn. We dumped the deceased into the toilet bowl and hummed taps.

Then we flushed and consigned the departed to a watery grave.

It is time to hum taps for my old Toshiba. It will hopefully be resurrected using the recovery disk, but the old memory full of Maxine jokes, Meridian articles and memorable stories that I did not get backed up are gone for forever. And, the sad part is, it is my own fault.

I was researching ghost towns in Colorado for one of my novels I am writing. I got too far afield and clicked on the home page for the site which, I gathered, was the gateway to any ghost town anywhere in the United States or perhaps the world. This horribly loud music blared from my speakers. Now, I like "Ghost Riders In the Sky," but not at a decibel level that bursts the eardrums. Buck was on his cell phone, waving his arm and giving me "the look" since he could not hear over the commotion.

First I tried to find the volume control, but it hid among all the many icons. I tried to red-x the site, but it locked up on me. I tried the control+alt+delete trick and nothing happened. I pressed the on-off button, and still I was assaulted by "Ghost Riders In the Sky." So, I did the only reasonable, but stupid, thing left to do. I unplugged the computer.

Ah, silence!

I waited 10 seconds and turned it back on. Uh-oh. It took me to the black screen of "your computer shut down unexpectedly..." warning. I followed directions. First, I tried starting at the "last known good configuration." Then I tried starting it in normal mode. I tried it in safe mode. I tried F-12 and F-2. Each time, the start-up would get only so far and crash. Actually, recycle would be a more accurate description. Once I got it going, I had a terrible time convincing the laptop to give it a rest and shut down already.

Phooey. I backed up everything a month ago in anticipation of needing to reformat the thing and starting over. Just the day before, I put the latest versions of most of the files I have been working on in my Dropbox folder (check it out at www.dropbox.com). So, except for the minutes from the Merced County Genealogical Society meeting of last Saturday that I will need to reconstruct, I am ready to reformat, recover, and start with a clean slate.

I guess later I will discover what other little files and favorites I forgot to back up. Until then........

Dum-da-dum -- dum-da-dum............