Courtney S. Barr

Welcome to My Kingdom!
Join me, the Princess, on my Royal Adventures in the Land of Writing!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Monday Memos & My Organization Flashdrive Failure....

"For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned."
-Anonymous

I tell myself this often.
I believe it.
I work hard to live by it, but I often fail miserably.
I am the type of person that likes a very organized life - yet I am a dreamer, an idealist who sees life as one beautiful journey after another.

This weekend organization decided to play with my mind. I have a flash drive (I affectionately call it Flora), one that has held many WIPs over the past year. It has dutifully saved the documents while acting as a tiny suitcase when I needed to transfer them between computers, complete with adorable little compartments to distinguish between work to critique and my own WIPs. Yep. Such a nice little girly gadget.

Then Saturday night as I am preparing to upload my perfectly organized files of some critiques the drive refuses to open. It gives me an error message that has my eyes filling with tears and lower lip in a death grip between my teeth. All I can think is thank goodness I have a back up of the WIPs but other files on there are just there - my most recent changes needed to be transferred and will be lost if the little white stick refuses to wake up.

I don't know what I did to aggravate the thing. My husband says she is probably jealous that I spent the afternoon on a lake & by a pool while she sat unused at the house. He could be right. I use that thing every day and then on Saturday I abandon it for 95 degree heat and drinks with friends....plus I just received a new netbook (named Tabitha by the way - yes I know lunacy but hey I name everything! I feel Tabitha will soon have a hot torrid affair with Gavin my traditional laptop...) and Flora might feel like it is some sort of replacement or something. We have not had the talk about how she is to be friends with Tabitha. That will come tonight.

I feel that my organizational techniques have earned me more than a few extra hours. So I cashed some in yesterday morning. Then again yesterday evening & well today I am lending them to my IT guy at the day job to see if he can make heads or tails of the thing.

Today my journey has decided to veer towards patience and hindsight. I should have saved another copy, I also must understand that my IT guru will probably be able to talk sweetly to her and make her feel loved again - it just may take a little while, she is female.

So while he works on Flora I will sketch out a way to double save all my docs, be a bit kinder to Flora, pray that y'all don't admit me to an asylum since I just shared a few too many idiosyncrasies in one post, and I will remember that the hours I saved from prior organization is the only reason I am not crying right now - I know that to be that upset would be pointless I must just be patient and see where today goes...

Any of you have any tips on extra organization when it comes to docs? What is your favorite way to insure your work stays safe?

(Oh and for any who missed last weeks' Madness post, well I just gave you a great example as to why writers are considered & proven to be a bit crazy - well if you don't see it just ask Flora, Tabitha or Gavin...they can explain ;o) )

***
So what is everyone else up to on this Monday morning?

Talli Roland begs the question how do you stay cool in the summer while writing??

CJ Redwine gives an adorable glimpse into her weekend/morning and also pencils in what date to have 'the talk' with her child...you know the one...

Jill Kemerer poses the question of "WHY IS YOUR CHARACTER HERE?" Her thought provoking post should have you thinking about scenes and whether or not you are providing prudent information or filler words...

Okay seriously...Shannon has done it AGAIN! What a contest! Win a signed copy of ARCHVILLIAN by Barry Lyga + Swag!! She has 600 followers! 600! I am quite proud to see my little picture under her follow button and if you don't see yours...well then get on over there!

***
Have a Marvelous Monday!

14 comments:

  1. Glad to hear that you're not freaking out :)

    It's important to back up (and in more than one place) because you're right. A little organization can save heartache later on. I hope you hear back from your IT guy with great news.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you are a model of patience in how you handled the situation. You do what we do for organizing--regular flash drive backups. Yuck.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Psst! Hey, Princess! I'm having a little surprise giveaway on my blog today to honor Elana - don't miss it! And boy, oh boy, do I hear ya about organization!!!! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have copies on my hardrive, my external hardrive, flashdrive, and I keep it backed up online via Google Documents. Serious stuff!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hopefully Flora is all good soon!

    I had a scary experience when my laptop refused to power up a bit ago. Now I use Mozy to back up the computer - it does it automatically when the computer is idle for 20 minutes - and an external hard drive. And I email wips to myself regularly. Paranoid, I know. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Pssh. Naming things lets them you know you love them! My computer's name is Gladys and the one before it was Frank (as in Sinatra). :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. So sad to hear Flora is acting up. Sadly, my beloved thumb drive did this to me about a month and a half ago and I discovered that thumb drives have a finite number of times you can write to them! Once the number's up, well so is your drive's, if you get my meaning. Sadly, I'm not incredibly organized and my last back up of anything was a month before and I'd been very busy during that month. (Hence, the lack of time spent backing up!) Oh, and when junior refused to accept any more data, he also blew a gasket on his memory. I couldn't access anything. The computer didn't know Junior was even tucked into for a bedtime story. By all means, take it to a specialist, but I fear you need to prepare for the worst. This reminds me to go back up everything. Now. ;D Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Good for you for not freaking out. I hope Flora's feeling happier soon. :) And thanks for reminding me that I really need to back up a bunch of my files before I have my own tale of woe to tell.

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've stopped using flash drives and use a program called DROPBOX instead. It automatically syncs files between multiple computers So much easier and safer!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Flora may need to be replaced! My husband wiped everything off our flash drive. Grrrr....thankfully I send LOTS of emails of my work :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm holding my breathe for you...I hope you get everything back...I've had a computer crash before. It's heart breaking...Which reminds me I need to go back up today's work...(fingers crossed for you)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thank you all for Flora's well wishes. I truly appreciate them. Also, thank you for some extra ideas on saving my work. I plan to look into some of your fail safes today. I used to email my files all the time and have decided to start doing that again. ;o) I also plan to purchase a new flashdrive. I haven't told Flora yet and well, she'll be crushed but if they can save her then maybe I can use her for other things...

    IT Guru still has her and says he did some research last night. He hopes *fingers crossed* that he can pull at least some of the files off - he is hopeful therefore so am I. We will see today...

    ReplyDelete
  13. I love the name Tabitha. Here's my own idiosyncrasy (did I spell that right?) I'm Wendy. My daughter is Samantha, but I wanted her to be Sabrina, and if I'd had a second daughter she would have been Tabitha. ALL WITCHES. I know. Ooooh, idea for next novel? *wicked smile spreads across lips*

    ReplyDelete
  14. Tabitha, Gavin and Flora are all reasons why we love you so much!

    ReplyDelete

The Princess is in...so what's up?