A Very Frustrating Day

Technology is a wonderful thing – but only when it works.  When it doesn’t it can be very, very trying.

Stupidly I transferred a lot of my work from my netbook onto a memory stick when we went on holiday as I had downloaded a load of dvd’s.  When we got back I didn’t bother putting it back on as I work from different computers and it was much easier just to use the memory stick than to continually move stuff back and forth between the computers – I have little memory myself and get easily confused! 

At the back of my mind I kept telling myself to back up all my work in case I lost the stick but never got round to it.   You know what’s coming next don’t you?

I’ve been working on my husband’s accounts recently – only behind by about 6 months so decided to do it in the dining room, so I could watch / listen to the X Factor.   I’ve worked hard this week on that and amazingly am almost up to date.   But when I was at work yesterday I decided to look at something on my usb in my lunch hour.  Put it this way, I didn’t eat much when I found that the memory was completely empty of files. 

I wracked my brains trying to figure out when I’d last done a back up, how much recent stuff I had printed off and what I was going to lose.  I wasn’t a happy bunny at all and constantly kicked myself all afternoon for not backing up properly.  It doesn’t matter how many horror stories I hear, or even the fact the hard drive on our main computer crashed before now, I still don’t seem to have learnt my lesson.  

Lesson now sunk in – BACK UP! BACK UP! BACK UP!

When I got home I decided to do a test and to my immense relief, it worked on my net book and all my files were there.  I was so happy!   I have now copied all files back onto my netbook as well as on to another memory stick just in case. There must be something wrong with the connection though because it memory stick wouldn’t work on the kids’ laptop either.  Think I will throw it in the bin now!

So sometimes technology is a wonderful thing and sometimes… well there’s just too much of it isn’t there?  In our house we just have too many gadgets and now my son has bought an I-pod touch with his birthday money.  Unfortunately I’m the only one in our house who even has a vague idea of technology so it’s up to me to set them up and deal with any problems when it all goes wrong.  Last night I was trying to set up the Ipod, help son with his homework, drop youngest son off at a class and pick him up an hour later, clean the house, cook the tea and put the ironing away.  Needless to say I didn’t get much of anything done. A very frustrating day indeed.

Anyway, whinge over, normal service to be resumed.  I just can’t wait until the boys get older and can deal with the techno stuff!