Between my laptop being afflicted with a virus and rendered unbootable (with the potential data loss of 10,000 words of my novel, several short stories, two radio plays, two acts of a play, audio data for five podcasts, and too many notes) and my inability to respond to any edrants emails for a while because of the draconian Port 25 requirements (“You can host your domain with us!”) and the almost total misrepresentation (“Actually, we won’t have static IPs in your neighborhood for another two weeks. Or maybe longer. [insert barely concealed laughter from tech guy]“) of my broadband provider, I’m limping along here as best as I can between deadlines. (At least one computer still works!)
The moral of the story is this: Back up your data, and back it up often. And get your broadband quote on paper, no matter what these bozos promise you.
If you’ve sent me an email to the main address, I can read them, but I won’t be able to answer them for a while. I’m sorry. Try arizona_jim at yahoo.com for the next two weeks if you need to get in touch with me in a hurry. I’m hoping to get back to everyone once these technical issues are worked out.
In any event, I hope to offer an update tonight or tomorrow.
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Ed, thanks for the chilling reminder to back up my laptop with the portable hard drive I bought a few weeks ago but which has not yet been removed from its box.
Yes, use mozy.com to backup. It automatically backs everything up—to two free gigabytes of online space—every night. After you get past the big upload hurdle, it uploads only what you’ve changed. I LOVE it. I hope that your novel in particular is all right. That’d be a huge blow.
P.S. You could always use this as an opportunity to switch to a Mac. I’m just sayin…
This is why I email my novel file to myself every day when I finish working.
Just awful!
You might be able to get your data out by using a free Linux boot CD, like say Knoppix or Ubuntu (google them for downloads)
Those loads the entire OS from the CD, and give you access to your hard drive, assuming the HD isn’t dead.
If you have a memory stick or something, you can then copy the data you need out to that.
Just remember to have a virus app ready for that memory stick when you plug it into another computer, in case the files you’ve put on are infected.
It’s worth a shot anyways. Good luck.
Ed – I’m SO sorry. You may recall that I went through a similar trial last November and ended up losing much, much data of many novels and short stories as well as a lifetime of photos. There is, however, the lovely service of data recovery from the disk doctor, which was a painful few thousand dollars. However — all was restored. For a hefty sum.
I can’t stress it enough. Back up. Back up. Back up. In two places. Maybe three. It is soul-crushing and heart-breaking to lose your work.