femminista: thoughts of a feminist rhetorician

First of all, I just want to say that I'm sick of learning things. To clarify: I still love to learn about and how to do new things; I am, however, tired of learning new "life lessons." In fact, I'd like to be left alone in a room with "life lessons" for a couple of hours and let said entity get a piece of my mind. Of course now that I think about it, it already has a piece of my mind, so I don't intend to give it any more. Damn, damn! And now I'm ranting and haven't even gotten to the point of this rant.

Before I get to the most recent point of this rant, I will say that my annoyance at life lessons has more to do with a certain person's tendency to tell me how "impressed" he is by my continued self-reflection and learning, blah, blah, blah. I suppose it helps him sleep at night. Ok. That was a little bitter, but I have had the summer from hell.

My last post described my current computer issues; they haven't improved. My powerbook hard drive has been successfully repaired and entirely backed up. However, this morning as I was working on one of the many websites that I am now currently the webmistress for, I realized that I needed to send some emails and once I logged in to Mail on this computer, I realized that my address book wasn't here. So, I got out the external hard drive that I used to back up my MacBook Pro in July and hooked it up, intending to get the Library folder and Address Book off of it. Here's where things went from bad to worse: the Library folder wasn't there and then I realized neither were any of my documents. Somehow I managed to back up the applications on my hard drive and only the applications. How I managed to do this, I don't know but as it dawned on me that the past nine months of my work was lost, I began to cry. Loudly. And even in comparison to my recent disappointments, profusely.

I tried again and again to access my old hard drive without luck. I think that my greatest upset was the loss of my photos and research. I realized that much of my actual writing had been posted electronically in some form or another and/or was located within the documents that I was able to put on a small jump drive on Friday. Luckily, I had created a second backup of my photos and some of my documents. It looks as though I have only lost two months worth of work and not the past nine months. Unfortunately, I've been inordinately productive during the past two months, so that's a pretty good chunk. Still, I feel better and am trying to turn this into something positive. I'm trying to see it as a learning experience ('life lessons" has been forever banned from my vocabulary) rather than a defeating one.

Learning #1:

1. I need to learn how to successfully back up my entire hard drive and do so on a regular basis.
2. To ensure #1, I need to automate the process.
3. I need a redundancy system (or two) so that if I fail to backup or my backup fails, I will not dissolve into tears

Learning #2:

1. I am entirely too emotionally attached to and overall dependant on my laptop
2. I/we are dependent on technology more than we should be.

I've recently had several discussions with colleagues about technology. In all of them my technophilia was obvious. I love my laptop and tell anyone who will listen. Other folks were mentioning their own interactions with technology and several of them mentioned that they like to separate themselves from their laptops (or other computer-related equipment) and enjoy the world without the mediation of the computer. I was fairly horrified because it's difficult for me to imagine extended periods without my laptop. I realize that I am now being forced to consider the prudence of that approach. Perhaps if I did less using my laptop, I wouldn't feel so disequilibriated by its recent failure. Is this a sign that I should wean myself off of my incessant laptop use? (If it is, I'm clearly not heeding it since I am sitting here on my old laptop typing this.)

There are things that need consideration here and they'll just have to wait. I have email to answer.

:)