The Mock Dock

I posted before about how much life pretty much stops when you can’t access the internet.  I find it virtually impossible to exist without internet.  So you can imagine my delight at having access to the internet on my new iPhone, which is quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever owned besides Suki.  I love high tech gadgets that are all gadgetolified and gadgetastic.

But you know what totally sucks about technology?  The part where you become totally dependent on it, and then when it fails to work in the way you expect it to, your life becomes completely f*cked.  Welcome to my last 18 hours.

So yesterday, remember how I posted joyfully about my 8th anniversary and happily told you of Mini-Mock’s mookie booka cha?  Yeah, that was the last time my computer actually worked.  After that, I shut down, went to work, tried to start my laptop up again, and……nothing.  Nothing, I should clarify, except the blue screen of death.  You know the screen I’m talking about – that one that basically says, “Your life, as you knew it, is about to end, with respect to technology and this particular laptop.”

So I go to my IT guy, and he goes to the Dell guy, and together they conclude that the only way to fix it is to “reimage” it.  So I think, “Sure!  Reimage!  That sounds awesome! Have at it!”  And so he did.  He basically reset my laptop to factory settings, and saved everything in my documents and on my desktop and in my internet favorites onto some other hard drive and then reloaded it all onto my “reimaged” laptop.

Here’s what he DIDN’T save, and what I discovered this morning.

EVERY EMAIL I’VE RECEIVED between July 10, 2007 and the day before yesterday.  Yeah.  A year and a half’s worth of emails, which, in my line of work, is pretty much catastrophic.  And, coincidentally, July 10, 2007is the date he gave me a new laptop.  So I have everything from my first day on the job to July 10, 2007, and then nothing beyond that except what came to me yesterday on my iPhone. So I go to him this morning to get help retrieving these emails, which I’ve neatly stored into personal folders (which are actually what’s missing), and he says, after researching, “Yeah. Those are gone.”

So the rest of our conversation?  Jump in to read.

Me:  Soooooo….what am I going to do?

Him:  Well, there’s nothing I can do.  Did you back up your personal email folders?

Me:  I don’t even know what that means.  How does one go about doing such a thing?

Him: With this program right here (pointing).  SyncToy.  You should be backing up your files on a regular basis.

Me:  Why have I never been informed of this process?

Him:  Well, we tell all of our new hires to do that.

Me:  Dude.  I’ve been here for TEN YEARS.  That’s longer than this SyncToy crap has even existed.  So clearly I missed out on the “new hire” instructions.  

Him:  Well, I’m pretty sure we told you how to back stuff up.

Me:  (resisting the urge to strangle him) Um no.  No, you didn’t.

So it hasn’t even really fully hit me – just how much I’ve lost and how much work will need to be redone, etc.  It’s overwhelming.  And the topper?  I no longer have sound.  You can imagine how enjoyable youtube clips are now, without sound.  The internet is basically on mute for me now.

And the day just kept getting better.  I got a bill from a doctor’s office who claims to have performed throat surgery on Mini-Mock two weeks ago, and they would like $2500.  Yeah.  I know I can be scatterbrained from time to time, but I’m fairly certain I would remember my own son’s THROAT being cut into two weeks ago, if in fact it had been cut into.  Which it hasn’t.  In fact, Mini-Mock hasn’t been to a doctor in months.  So I spent the better part of an hour trying to convince this doctor’s office that I in fact was NOT trying to just get out of paying a bill, but actually was not the mother of a child who had their throat sliced into.  Which again, I feel like I would remember.

Big shout out to Dame, who covered for me MARVELOUSLY today with her version of celebrity snark.  That was the first part of my day getting better.  The 2nd part was Daisy treating me to a Jimmy John’s sandwich for lunch.  The 3rd part was coming home and getting a big ole fat snuggly hug from Mr. Mock, and the best part?  Mini-Mock saying, “Did you have a bad day? If I hug you will that make you happy?” in his cutest, most precious almost 3-year old voice, and then throwing his arms around my neck.

MELT.

Anyway, what’s done is done, right?  It’s time to suck it up and deal now.  I reserve the right to be pouty and pitiful this evening, but I plan to be back to my normal self tomorrow, even as I get bombarded with requests from co-workers and clients to respond to emails I no longer have.

Technology – I love and hate you so!