I'm Back.....

After feeling an overconfidence in this whole internet experience, and blogging to my hearts desire, I contracted a rather forced hiatus when my computer suffered a virus of major proportions.

What? How? Well, wouldn't I like to know. All I could see was that after wandering around the internet looking for things to read, pop-ups were flinging themselves to me faster than candy to Lucy & Ethel at the chocolate factory. As fast as I could, I was deleting them, but only had a snowballs chance in hell of becoming successful.... and to add insult to injury, I lost my desktop and start button in the process. Now I knew I was in trouble, and being that it was a friday night, I had no one to call.... and quickly shut off the computer from the PC itself. There, I thought, all you bad guys go away!.... and by the way, wasn't the Norton AV supposed to save me from all this? Being a determined but somewhat nosy person, I went back in to find Norton. Little did I know, but he was shut off, not able to recover for a week.

Ah.... what to do? Well, I did have this recovery CD... why not give it a chance, after all it said "recovery". To me, recover always meant to "get well", "fix", "bring back". What I should have done was consult Mr. Webster as one of his meanings was "restore".... which is exactly what did happen. I was successful in restoring my computer back to the original state it was in before I brought it home from the computer store. Since I did not put my programs into the computer originally, restoring was as foreign to me as the virus that knocked it out in the first place.
At this point, my sailor mouth took full bloom. What the heck did I do now?.... and what the heck was I going to do now? At this point, I've been working on it for 4 hours... it was time to say good-night Gracie!

After consulting my friend from the computer store the next day, I came away feeling like I did the absolute worst thing in putting in the recovery CD.... he could not guarantee that I did not wipe out all of the accounting system for my business. After inserting quite a few more sailor mouth words, I decided to call my bookkeeper and see if she could console me in the fact that I wasn't a total idiot. She was wonderful (as always) and assured me that it probably was all there, all we had to do was find it. Easier said than done.

My first task was to restore Quickbooks. Well, after putting in a busy saturday with a wedding, club party and swing back around to pick up all the equipment (another 10 hour work day), I arrive at my office to start my first task. It was a no-go! What???? I know it's in there, or have I really deleted all my data! The computer kept asking for the 2002 version, and would not accept my 2000 version. I quickly shut everything down again, to wait for a new day to pester my bookkeeper again. And once again, she did not disappoint. Armed with software to start up any office, she came to my rescue and was able to find all my files.... (THANK YOU, LORD!) The very thought of going through my many paper files and re-entering invoices, payments, checkbook, etc.... was not a happy vision, especially since it was accumulated in the span of 8 years.

Our only problem was that Norton wouldn't come back, and the DSL line was oblivious to our prayers of restoration. Well, I'm 50% there.... now what? In consulting a Comp USA techguy,
he informs me that I still have the virus, and nothing will work until I bring it in , have them clean-sweep it and restore my data again..... all for only $250.00. Hmmmmm..... I have to think about this overnight. Waking up the next day, a thought came to me that we were doing a catering for a local computer store.... I wondered if they would barter food for a fix? Again, I got very lucky.... they said yes, bring it it. It turns out that the ram memory was defective, of which they replaced it, swept it clean, and restored my programs..... all for two turkeys (fried and roasted) the day after Thanksgiving. How wonderful was that?

Now, I'm 75% effective.... lets bring this baby home and get the internet connected! Again, easier said than done. The lights on my internet modem would not stop blinking and go solid like they were supposed to do. Well, I might have guessed that was going to happen.... so instead of losing my temper, I called support and they had a techguy out the next day. By now, it's thursday, and I am swallowing chill pills by the handful. He takes all of 15 minutes, and has me up and running. Instant cure! Now I can really get to work, as I have much to enter and lots of blog reading to catch up on. Who knew your life was so controlled by everything you log into your computer? This was a lesson I learned in spades!

Now.... to write something.... to vent.... it was all I looked forward to. And once more, easier said than done. Whatever I did to get into my blog, was to no avail. ARRRG! What now? Go figure that I would forget my user and password. No matter what I did, I ended up doing something I shouldn't have done (set up a new blog, change passwords, etc...). After many words of wisdom from my a wonderful friend, Snaggle, I called it a night and decided to sleep on it. Besides, my other wonderful friend, Neo, must have known me well enough to save all my information for me, and was able to help me through the final process of arriving back at my garden.

I've always been a believer that everything happens for a reason, be it pre-destined or coincedence. Life is easier to accept on these terms.... and makes up for the moments when you look in the sky and say "Why me"? We all do it, and we can't help it; but if I survive out of it, the first thing I think, is that there was a lesson I needed to learn.... and I feel I was taught a few more than I had bargained for this time around, landing in the cat-bird seat.
The night of my crash, black friday, TBS was playing "The Wizard of Oz".... one of my favorites.
Being so determined to pay attention to the problems at hand, I had the mute button on throughout the movie, until the end, when Dorothy was finally home and uttered those famous words, "there's no place like home". Next time I go to wander off the yellowbrick road to look for better sites to go to on the internet, I'll go no further than my own backyard. I'm a "safe" freak..... be it the many things I've seen or done, I don't know..... it's just a comfortable zone for me. Maybe my age is showing?

My other valuable lesson consisted of the wonderful people I was able to count on during this time. To me, there is nothing more powerful than family and friends. My Dad used to say that he wasn't a very wealthy man, but he was very rich...... now I know what he meant.