They Might Be Giants have this great song that kind of doubles as a musical buffet of New York’s greatest places. I spent my day getting to know some of the finer points of a different big apple, the computery kind. Yup, tech support. I gotta say, it was the single greatest tech support experience I’ve ever had. I was probably with the guy 30 - 45 minutes total and we talked about our works and the weather. I restrung my guitar and discussed the finer points of Macs. For instance the time displacement effect when they say a download will take 35 minutes and it only takes five so that when it says a minute is left and it takes three minutes you have no real grasp of the time and that three minutes feels like 10 when it’s supposed to be just one.
Got all that? Either way, they helped me figure out a long standing frustration with my Software Updates. I couldn’t get them to work is the short version. He walked me through it and now I’m bopping along swimmingly. All except for the fact I completely took my computer back to zero the night before hoping it would help, which it didn’t.
So, I’ve been spending the day getting things back from my Time Machine backups. See, you thought I was going to tell you I had lost everything, didn’t you? Well, you would have been right, at least partially.
You see when I set the Macbook back up I did it with a different user than we had originally so when I brought in the old user and stuff from my time machine backup it locked me out of folders that I had no permission to get into (because I didn’t exist when the backups where being made). I was a new user so of course I didn’t have permissions. That’s when it dawned on me, “I don’t think it brought over any of my music, movies and pictures.” Which immediately sent my heart pounding and my head into panic/terror mode.
I pulled up iphoto, no pictures, it had brought in the app but not the content. I silently shouted in my head, “Where are my pictures...”, and then I thought about how I was going to have to tell The Wife I have deleted every picture we had taken as a couple. I almost cried.
Then I thought, I did bring over my other user info, and it might have the content since it has permission to access it. So, I logged out and rememberized my way to the other account and darted full speed to the dock at the bottom. Deftly, I clicked on iPhoto and waited as the app, for the first time, loaded the pictures it had. The white screen that mockingly read, “loading photos” seemed to sit there forever. I closed my eyes and sent up a quiet, quick, and ultimately selfish prayer that the pictures would be there. When I opened my eyes the screen was still blank and my heart sunk low.
I don’t think I’ve felt like such a fool. I had destroyed years of memories because I was careless. I almost cried, but before I could a picture popped up. It was one of my youth with the chik-fil-a cow. I was suddenly filled with hope and darted to the pictures to see if everything was still there. It looked good and I raced to my wedding pictures, “please still be there” I thought. They were, and then I cried a little.
I had never looked as longingly at those pictures as I did just then. The thought of losing them was unbearable. So, maybe the moral is to never get yourself in a situation you don’t fully understand how to fix. Or, maybe it’s to not take for granted the special things in your life because once their gone you don’t always get them back. Needless to say, I’m going to back the pictures up special for my peace of mind, and I’m going to kiss my wife and make sure she knows I love her.
I love those pictures, but I can always make more. I would hate to take another picture without my wife. And, that’s what I’m taking out of this.
No comments:
Post a Comment