New background!

Oooh, oooh, ooh. More colors and designs for me to choose from!

I'm talking, of course, about my blog's background.

It's difficult to find just the right background, isn't it? Or maybe it's just me. I have a hard time picking a favorite color, much less a pattern. But oooh...isn't this exciting?

Well, maybe that's also just me.

I have a new background, in any case. It's pink! I like pink. But not too overwhelmingly pink, I hope, so as not to scare off anyone.

At least it doesn't have any birds on it. I have a thing about birds. Especially robins. They stare down their beaks at me. I once saw a robin play with its food, a poor, innocent worm. It's so cruel! No, I have not and will not ever watch the Birds.

So. I'm still out here, surviving on my computer. I have a new hard drive, a new operating system (Windows 7), and a few ideas for new stories. Even if I am lacking the oomph to write, right now. The newness of everything is exciting, if a bit daunting. But that's a good thing, right?

Hard Drives, and why they are important.

I assume everyone knows how important hard drives are. Especially if you are on here. After all, hard drives store everything--the entire life of your computer, and all of the files you add on. That's why it's so important to back things up. Heard that before? I have. And I've meant to.

You know, I can be awfully lazy about things like that. Who isn't, really? I think, to be perfectly honest, that the last time I backed up my computer was about 2 years ago. Maybe even a bit more. Since then, I've added stories, video, music and photos, all of which are terribly, terribly important to me.

I'm going to find out how long ago I backed up my computer today. Why? Because last Thursday, my hard drive failed.

I was watching TV on my computer, in part because I don't have cable and my television set barely gets two channels at the moment. Suddenly, I heard a clicking noise, repeating. "Click-click-click-click-click." And then my computer rebooted, because it was unable to read anything. And it rebooted again, and again, and again.

I freaked out a bit right there, but overall, I've been fairly calm. Not much else I can do, really. Thank Heavens that I emailed a few things to both myself and to my writing bud Amalia T. (It occurs to me that I missed out on her dream sequence blogfest. I just saw it was on Friday, yesterday. Good gravy. I've been out for a while, and it's not been easy. Sorry, Amalia!) And thank Heavens that I took part in as many blogfests as I did. I have some tidbits here and there, a few things saved other places. I'm not as lost as I could be.

But--I still lost a lot. And trust me, I've looked into file retrieval. It's not looking pretty.

So, I'm still here, dear readers and followers. Barely. But please, learn from me--back up your hard drive. Or at least the files that are most important to you. Because if you lose everything, you will feel lost, too.