So, the computer fried Monday, April 15. On that Friday I got a SATA cord and was happy to find my data still on the hard drive - since I foolishly had not backed up regularly. I also joined Sam's Club and ordered a new laptop.
That evening I went to a village event where they gave away a bunch of raffle tickets to deposit with various merchants. Monday I got a phone call that I'd won a laptop. At first that seemed ironic, but it's refurbished and, while it is better than what I was using, it's not what I need for work. One of my sons will end up with it. At least it felt less like the tech gods were angry at me.
However, it took another week to get all my data downloaded from the salvaged hard drive to another external drive. You see, I'd had two external drives that I was supposed to be using for weekly backups. I got everything copied onto one and took it to the safety deposit box. Then I started copying files onto the second. It wouldn't take a file with files within files as a whole - I had to go in and copy them one layer at a time. And when I went back, there were files I thought I'd copied that weren't, so maybe I was thinking of putting them on the drive at the bank. I thought I was losing my mind when I seemed to be uploading the same files a third or fourth time... until I realized it was the drive, not me. Maybe there's one tech god still playing with me?
Two weeks out, I had the data copied onto one external drive and my new computer arrived. It took another week with lots of time with Microsoft and Adobe techs to get my software onto the new machine and updates downloaded and adjustments made to the computer software by Microsoft. (There may be a few more of those coming - still having some issues with File Explorer.) I actually started working again Friday, May 3.
I'm limiting how much I actually keep on the computer now. Some will go to the cloud, though I'm trying to keep that limited for privacy reasons. Folders with things I'm actively working on will be saved to a thumb drive and that will be rotated each week. All the background stuff is on the hard drive in the safety deposit box and on the hard drive from the fried computer. I'm getting a case for that and keeping it at home.
Did I mention I also dropped my cell phone in the toilet that first week and had to adjust to a different phone and service? My daughter called me today - only her name didn't pop up and I wondered who was calling me who sounded like my daughter. She was relieved it was a new phone and not the onset of senility. Me too.