Computers don't save work, they just move it around

[resonant]

I had a hard drive crash at work about a month ago. Just about the time I achieved equilibriium and figured out what-all was missing, it came time for a long-dreaded massive switchover which is nearly as tedious to explain as it is to experience, but the result of which is that all of my team have to reset our laptops back to factory condition and then start over again.

This was probably a bad time to decide to start using a schmancy ergonomic split keyboard, wasn't it?

And still waiting for me is the new personal laptop that I bought months ago to replace the old Mac I'm using right now, which is too old to accept system software updates.

Anyone could have predicted the computer; to predict an hour on hold waiting for the help desk, you needed science fiction.

Comments

[blueraccoon]

A few weeks ago my work laptop battery decided to try and explode, so I brought the laptop into the office so they could fix it. that was Thursday. Friday it was ready but I couldn't get into the office.

Sunday my office was burgled and my laptop was stolen.

Tuesday I discovered that my last cloud backup of my OneNote notebook, which I use for literally everything work-related, was October 29, 2020 and the cached backup files were on the hard drive that got stolen.

I got...very high that night.

[resonant]

Oh NO!

I had something similar with the backup - it was misconfigured and hadn't saved anything useful since 2017 - but burglary certainly adds some flair to the whole disaster.

[blueraccoon]

It's not even the loss of notes that bothered me so much because I'm a process person, my notes are generally specific to the report I'm writing & once I'm done with the report I don't usually need the notes again.

But that was nine months of work tracking I lost and I have ADHD, I cannot tell you what I did two days ago let alone two months ago. I still want to cry a little when I think of it.

...2017 kinda wins for worse backup, though. I hope you are at least set up and running now?

[adafrog]

Anyone could have predicted the computer; to predict an hour on hold waiting for the help desk, you needed science fiction.
*snort*

[minoanmiss]

I really love that line, yeah.

[minoanmiss]

I am so, so sorry. I will hope as much as I can that the laptop returns intact to you.

[blueraccoon]

Oh it's long gone at this point. I've accepted my losses (mostly) and have moved on. I set up a new notebook and made sure it's backing up to the cloud though!

[sineala]

Speaking as someone who has currently been attempting to learn a bizarre ergonomic keyboard layout, I feel like the best thing for my motivation to learn it was the part where half of my laptop keyboard started slowly failing and the ergonomic one was the only external keyboard I owned. I have definitely made a lot of keyboard progress in the past few months that I would not have made otherwise.

[resonant]

This keyboard doesn't have a different layout - I've been typing since 1980; I can't even imagine how stressful that would be!

This one is just in two pieces and you can move them apart, rotate them, or tilt them. Also there's a "convenient" additional panel of shortcut keys where I expect the ctrl key to be, and apparently the rest of the world types the letter B with their left hand but I've always used my right and now it's on the wrong side.

[jesse_the_k]

you're both 100%

[jesse_the_k]

Your tag proves you've attained Zen Chill.

Best wishes on the next one!

[azurelunatic]

I enjoy my split ergonomic keyboard but then I also imprinted on the Microsoft ergonomic keyboard, so it wasn't a huge change for me.

[resonant]

Yeah, there's always going to be a next one, isn't there?

I've been going through that 2017 backup, and I never expected to have to clean those files out; I assumed I'd lose them in some crash or other.

[resonant]

I'm struggling with it partly because of layout differences, partly because it takes up more space than my old one, and partly because as soon as I could type with my wrists slightly rotated outward I began to need a tilted mousepad so I never had to flatten them again!

[azurelunatic]

When you give a mouse one ergonomic improvement...!