Twice today I have tried to publish a post on this blog about the TV development season and the pilots the networks are considering.
This morning, I wrote a long, detailed article full of brilliant observations, interesting TV pilot trivia, and stunningly insightful commentary on the Industry (if I do say so myself)… and through an idiotic computer mishap, lost it all.
I nearly stuck my fist through my computer monitor. Clicked off and busied myself with other things.
So I sat down tonight and attempted to resurrect the article from memory and, although it wasn’t half as good as the earlier version, I was happy with it… and I was nearly done, about to insert another link and… clicked the wrong window to close, and lost that !@#$%^ article, too.
So the hell with it.
I probably shouldn’t have been writing about pilots anyway. I might need a job on one of the shows I was criticizing…
I had that “close the window on a message I was sending” just yesterday, only it was to pmachine about why I can’t enable comments on my blog, so I HAD to reconstruct the message.
I hope you give it another shot, though, on that essay. The inside information is always fascinating.
“I probably shouldn’t have been writing about pilots anyway. I might need a job on one of the shows I was criticizing…”
That’s exactly how I look at it when stuff like that happens to me. Someone — God, probably — is trying to tell me not to post this, so stop trying. 🙂
Lee, you TEASE!
I feel for ya Lee. I just lost an entire NOVEL via some bizarre Word mishap. Boy did I do a lot of drinking that night…
I cover myself on my books by constantly backing up — both to my hard-drive as well as an external hard drive — and emailing myself the file several times a day (so there’s always a copy on line for me if my hard drives crash).
I also print out each day’s work so, if worse comes to worse, at least I have the paper copy.
Yeah, the sad thing is, that’s what I usually do, make several back up copies (hard copy, hard drive, e-mail myself a copy) but just didn’t get around to it for the novel I had just finished. *sigh*
Who cares about you — your partner might need a job on one of those pilots!
Yeah it’s been that kind of day. I crashed my computer hopelessly just trying to empty the temp internet files. Got it back eventually though. Books I back up incessently. You have too.
Re Bob Sassone’s post: when files disappear, they don’t generally disappear from your hard drive. What happens is the file directory entries — the pointers to those files — get changed. Basically if you can remember as far back as library cards, what’s happened is the library card has been lost or changed. The book is still in the library — though the chapters are scattered here and there. If you’ve lost an entire novel, it’s likely worth it to buy a utility — Norton probably makes one — that allows you to scan your hard drive directly. You’ll probably find big chunks of text there.
That said, the odds are good that if you have to rewrite the damn thing, the results will be better than the first time. But it won’t be as much fun to write.
Also, probably a good time to switch to the latest Mac OS X.