A Week to Forget

In the history of my life, this week is one week that I would like to Forget. Erase. Delete. Poof. Shaza’am! Gone. If stress would indeed cause gray hair, my hair should be white as snow by now. My outlook this week has been similar to that of Eeyore and Chicken Little. I’ve been expecting the sky to fall at any moment.

Back-to-back exams and accounting projects have been the culprits causing the increased stress levels. The results—less than pretty, for sure. And I even took a day off work to study. Yes indeedy…it’s been a bad week.

I was quite relieved to see the end of my school week by Thursday afternoon. I went to Wal-mart and didn’t even have the heart browse. I just bought the three items I needed and went home.

The lawn needed to be mowed, and I thought maybe a stint of riding the lawnmower and listening to music would brighten my mood. I got on the mower…and the battery was so dead it couldn’t even produce an ignition light. Figured…fit right in with the week.

Martin got me going and off I went. It proved to be a good chance to brood for the first while. I finally began to let loose of my horrible week—that is, until a short time before I was finished when I ran into a cable hidden in the grass that wrapped itself around the blades and stalled the mower. It was getting dark and supper was ready, so I just left it. I just didn’t have the heart to deal with it.

Friday morning, I was glad to be going to work instead of school. At least I know what’s going on there. Not a lot there that I can’t handle…or so I thought.

After fielding the normal razzing for taking a day off, I gladly sat down at my desk and hit the power button on the computer. I was ready…payroll, deposit, orders, phone calls—Bring. It. On!

The computer booted up and prompted me for the password, except WAIT A MINUTE!! I don’t have a password for the computer. It has NEVER required a password. Let me repeat that. This computer has never required a password. It always goes straight to the desktop, and I’m ready to go. A cold chill flooded my body and wrapped itself around my heart. My week had followed me to work.

I interrupted the office conversation to inquire if anyone had set a password recently. Blank looks—not a good sign. I called my assistant at home to see if anything unusual had happened the day before. Nope, not a thing. Rebooting did nothing for the password request. Putting in the two variations of the usual office passwords got me exactly nowhere. I felt ill.

I remembered that this exact thing had happened to my boss’s new laptop and tech support had run him through a reformat of the hard drive without him even realizing what they were doing and him losing everything (which luckily wasn’t much). Reformatting this hard drive would NOT be an option. Seven and a half years of hard work down the drain? I don’t think so!

I’m not sure how visible my panic was, but at one point, Wayne said, “You’re probably trying to remember when the last time was that you backed up the computer, aren’t you?” I hated to admit it, but I was. It was one of the first things that flashed through my mind.

I pulled out the paperwork I received with the computer and started the horrendous process of calling tech support. Wayne spent some time on the phone calling local computer shops while I was on hold with someone on the other side of the ocean. He received responses that varied from “Never heard of it” to “I could fix it in 15 minutes but can’t come until Monday.”

Well, the long and the short of it is that I spent the next two and a half hours on the phone with tech support (probably at least two of those hours were spent on hold) and spent somewhere between $85 to $130 (I got three different quotes from three different people) for a fifteen minute procedure that saved me from one of the biggest potential disasters of my career.

One nice thing is that if you’re willing to pay for the tech support, they’ll give you someone on your own continent to talk to. Understanding Joe was not a problem, and he knew what to do without reading from his list of procedures in a halting monotone. He was even somewhat apologetic about the price I’d had to pay for such a short conversation and a relatively easy fix. He took the time to review the entire procedure verbally again after the problem had finally been fixed.

No one knows how a password got set in the first place. Once I was up and running, the first thing that I did was back up my accounting file. A review of the files on my backup revealed backup dates of which I’m thoroughly ashamed. I had backed it up since then, but to the hard drive where it would have done me no good in this case. Needless to say, an external hard drive and backup software are on the top of my shopping list.

If I hadn’t been in such a snit, I may have been able to think further than the tip of my nose and come up with personal acquaintances that could have helped me for free, but I wanted help and I wanted it immediately! I know that the hard drive could have been removed and data retrieved that way, but I had stuff to do then—not later. For sure, I know how to take care of it now if it happens again.

Yup, it’s been a rotten week. And if I were you, I’d stay away from me. You might get hit by a piece of falling sky.

Down the Tubes

On Monday night (early Tuesday morning), I was up until 2:15 writing an 11-page paper that was due on Tuesday. When I finally deemed it finished enough to allow myself to go to bed, I printed a copy out, saved the file, and stumbled into bed for 4 hours and 55 minutes of sleep. It was God's providence that had me hit that Print button before going to bed.

On Tuesday morning, as I was getting ready, I read over the paper and found a number of small adjustments to make, which I did. I threw the old copy in the trash and, for some unknown reason, decided to hit the save button before I printed the final draft. I received an error message saying that it could not save the file to my flash drive. Fine. I'd just save it to My Documents and then try to save it to my flash drive. I did a Save As and got another error message saying that the program had an error and would have to save all files and shut down.

Well, that would be fine...just as long as it actually saved the file. I held my breath as I went to My Documents to look for my paper and to my relief...there was the file. I double clicked on it and there, where just moments before had been an almost perfectly lovely 11-page paper, were 46 pages of small squares.

I checked my flash drive then and discovered that the error with my flash drive had removed my copy of the file from it. With a sinking heart, I reached back down into my trashcan and pulled out my only basically complete copy of the paper I spent hours and hours writing. All that remained of my paper was a paper copy with a few minor errors, a 46 page file of squares, and a copy of the file I had e-mailed to myself when it was a mere 2.5 pages long.

By this time, it was 8:00, and I had drive to BG and be in class by 9:35. No time to retype. I made my way to school and went looking for my professor's office to see what she would have me to do. She was very kind and sympathetic and said that rather than making me retype the entire paper, I could just pencil in any changes I wanted and she would accept it that way. God bless nice professors!!!

I thank God that I hit Print before I went to bed that night. Had I not done that, I'm afraid I might have spent the day in bed weeping at the many lost hours of excruciating writing. As I told my professor, for me to write a paper must be akin to birthing a child, for it is a painful process.

A word to the wise: save several copies of any document you value. I had saved my document--in two different places, in fact--and both copies ended up being destroyed. What are the chances??

In the Finance Department...

As I was walking down the hall of the Finance Department this afternoon, I passed a bulletin board and caught sight of the word “God” out of the corner of my eye. I stopped and turned back to see what the board said. My amusement quota for the day came closer to being filled as I read:

May those who love us, love us;
And those who don’t love us,
May God turn their hearts;
And if He doesn’t turn their hearts,
May He turn their ankles

So we can identify them by their limping.

Frustration Detected

You know you’ve been around for a while when your classmates begin to sense your mood or emotions.

I had an assignment due today that was less than explicit in the instructions given to complete the assignment. I periodically checked in with other students to see how they completed parts of the assignment, checked with the prof for input, and became increasingly disillusioned with the assignment as time went on. I’ve wrestled with it for a week or more and was quite sick of it by this afternoon.

I arrived at the university today, frustrated by the traffic that cut into my already small window of time to walk to class. I didn’t realize that the combination of the frustration with traffic and the assignment had affected me that much, but about five minutes after I arrived in class, the girl that sits to my left overheard me talking to the guy that sits to my right about the assignment. She laughed a little and told me that she didn’t say much to me when I walked in because she could tell I wasn’t having a very good day. Oops. I didn’t mean to let that show.

After I turned the assignment in at the end of class, I went back to my seat to pack my things up. Several students were standing in front of my table talking, and as I was putting the last of my things away, one of my friends in the group must have been watching me because she said, “Sharon, you can smile—it’s not that bad.” Oops again.

I couldn’t help but laugh at my brooding and left class feeling a little better because she cared enough to try to cheer me up.

An Unwanted Classmate

As I settled in this morning in accounting class, I idly noticed a wasp buzzing around one of the light fixtures in the middle of the room. I didn’t think much of it and spread my book, binder, and tablet on the table in front of me. I paid no more attention to him until I saw him descend from the heights and land in the middle of Dr. H’s overhead projector midway through class.

The sight of the oversized wasp on the screen was amusing to a number of us (it doesn’t take much to be amused in the midst of an accounting lecture), and it didn’t take Dr. H long to figure out that he was no longer the center of attention.

He walked over to the projector, lifted the paper the wasp was sitting on, and attempted to shake him to the floor. The wasp hung on for a bit, then reluctantly let go and flew over several inches and settled for sitting on the projector cart, instead of the projector itself.

Dr. H resumed his lecture, and the wasp spent some time enjoying the pros and cons of recognizing revenue from his front row seat. As one is wont to do, he must have gotten bored with the percent-of-completion method, so he lazily took flight to explore the light fixtures again. It was somewhat distracting to Dr. H, and he said, “Well, if I’d known he would be here, I’d have brought my flyswatter.”

Everyone resumed their respective duties—lecturing, dozing, doodling, or taking notes. A few minutes later, I became aware that the wasp had once again descended from his lofty playground because of a somewhat strangled squeal from Emily, who was sitting in my row about five people away from me. She emitted the sound again, only at a slightly more elevated pitch and volume. She was trying—without much success—to control her fear as the wasp buzzed around her head.

By that time, Dr. H had caught on that, once again, he was no longer the center of attention. He quit talking, and we all watched as poor Emily scooted her chair back, trying to dodge the wasp. She must have thought he landed in her hair, for she bent over and shook her hair while combing it with her fingers. As she finger combed her hair, the wasp lazily floated away, not caring much for the commotion. Once she had been assured that the wasp had not taken up residence in her hair, Emily resumed her seat and class continued.

I, of course, was down at the end of the row dealing with a problem of my own. Now I know it’s not nice to laugh at people, and even though I didn’t really want to be laughing at what was an uncomfortable situation for Emily, it became one of those situations where it was acceptable to “chuckle, chuckle” and then be done with it—and I could not comply. And to make matters worse, my buddy sitting to my left was not doing so well at complying either. It took a bit, but we finally managed to dry it up.

Less than five minutes later, the wasp disrupted class again by landing on the projector. This time, Dr. H was not going to let an opportunity slip by without at least making an attempt at punishing the wasp for being disruptive in class. He strolled over to the podium, picked up his large accounting textbook, and approached the projector with his weapon in hand. I was hoping he wouldn’t get too slaphappy, because I didn’t think the projector would be too keen on getting that particular type of attention.

Dr. H took aim and struck the wasp with a controlled swat that didn’t have the desired effect. The wasp toppled down onto the cart where Dr. H took aim once more and landed a solid punch. With a “So there!,” Dr. H strolled back to the podium in a dignified manner and resumed his lecture.

Accounting books are such useful items! And see? We do have fun in accounting class.