What A Hard Drive Problem Has Taught Me

So, sorry for the delay in my post for Friday, July 24. My computer decided to get some kind of corrupted hardware issue. It’s under warranty, so we’re taking it to Staples (where we bought it) to get it looked at.
I know a lot of people think I am very, almost overly, attached to my computer. And to a degree, yeah, I am. I would say this is an addiction of sorts. I do use my computer all the time.
Being a technopagan, my computer has become an extension of my life. I mean, it is a fairly lame life, but it’s still my life. Also, as a technopagan, I see my computer as an actual ritual item. This is my Book of Shadows, so even when I’m sitting on the floor even purifying new crystals, I keep my laptop near me. I may not have MSN going (or I ignore it), but my media player will be on, and of course I’ll have my USBoS loaded and ready in case I need to check anything.
So, I guess when my computer has any sort of error, be it one that is easily fixed or one that isn’t, it’s still like a ritual tool is broken. Imagine how shitty you would feel if you found your athame to be broken.

This actually has taught me a couple of things, and being the wonderful person I am, I’m going to share them.
First off, this has taught me that important things like a USBoS needs to be backed up. I had always saved my pagan files on an external hard drive (hence USBoS), but hard drives are fallible. I have been lucky with my USBoS, but I can’t always trust luck. If I had all my formal documentation typed up, then I wouldn’t be as concerned, because I would have printed off backups. But I’m still processing raw documents, ranging from 5 documents to a folder, to over 200. Printing THAT is like hell.
I backup my files on MediaFire now. It’s much less fallible than a hard drive, and I can access it from any computer.

It’s also taught me to write shit down. I never write anything down unless I plan to use it. So, because of that, I never even just copied the URL for a site I Stumbled-Upon. I should have kept a list of sites I got information from on a scrap of paper, just handwritten. Then, I could go back at re-copy information if I had to. Sure, the sites that I have bookmarked, and of course m books make it easy to go back, but all the sites I just randomly found and never bothered to write down or save in some manner...what do I do about that?
Seriously, write shit down, even if you fully plan to just toss the list when you’re done.

It’s a rather conflicting feeling, when you lose a ritual item, and such a big part of your life. On one hand, it is just a computer, and it is an addiction. On the other hand, it is a ritual item and I do use it as such.

In case you were curious, we went to Staples, they diagnosed a hard drive problem, and since we’ve got the two year warranty plan, they fix it. Put in a new hard drive, new disk drive, and it comes back “out of the box new” in about a week.