Once upon a time, I started writing The Great American Novel. That was three computers and four word processors and more years ago than I want to remember.
Two years ago, I decided, this would be the year that I finish TGAN. I'll take the laptop with me on vacation. With two five-hour plane rides, I will have no trouble finishing the story. I can excuse myself to the in-laws and start the rewrites.
Naturally, it didn't work quite that way. The battery in the laptop wouldn't hold a charge. The hotel was not air conditioned, and the only relatively cool place to write was in a public area. Still, I did get most of the final chapter roughed out and shaped up.
When I got home, the three cats were glad to see me, though miffed at my previous neglect. I snuggled into my favorite chair with the laptop, and continued polishing the final chapter of TGAN.
The senior cat jumped into my lap to cuddle. I typed over and around him. He soon left in a snit. Then the fuzzy cat jumped into my lap. I kept on typing. He too left in a snit. The sleek cat jumped into my lap and made enough of a nuisance of himself that I decided to call it a night. As usual, I turned off the computer, closed the top, and left it in a basket behind my chair, inside the open carrying case.
First, though, I backed up the final chapter onto a floppy, and copied it to my desktop computer. I thought briefly about backing up the rest of the files, and decided there was no need for that. They were, after all, backed up on the big computer.
The next night, I grabbed the laptop and turned it on. Odd, I thought, when I saw drops of moisture on the inside of the case. My diet soda was well away from the laptop, how could there be moisture? I had a sinking feeling and reluctantly sniffed the moisture.
Essence of cat. One of my feline companions had baptized the case.
The computer shop confirmed our fears. The moisture had indeed gotten onto the system board. They could fix it, they thought, for, say, $700, no guarantee that it would work, though.
That was when we also discovered that a hard drive failure on the desktop computer had lost the recent updates to the other files. The files on the floppy were not the latest versions. The last tape backup was better, but still did not have the most recent updates.
Eventually, we were able to recover the files from the cat-annointed computer. But alas, the Muse had fled. The (new) laptop waits patiently (out of reach of cats). The Great American Novel continues to evolve, at a slightly better than glacial rate.
Jim bought a new Compaq Presario laptop, which he used for his Cisco training clases, and to create the materials for the class he's teaching on Tuesday nights.
Yesterday, Roger, the senior cat, hopped up on the desk to get a pat, and started to sprawl across the laptop keyboard. Jim picked Roger up to relocate him to the floor. Roger's claws got caught in the keyboard and out flew the A and Caps Lock key caps!! Jim recovered the key caps, and placed a distraught call to Compaq. They came up with a plan that involved much shipping by overnight delivery.
I consulted our IT guys, who assured me that they could probably fix the problem. Jim sent the laptop in to the office with me, sternly warning that the computer could not be shut down--the signon password contained an A. Luckily, Mike in IT said that if I could find the little white doodads that go in the keys, the repair would be easy. Also luckily, the little doodads hadn't flown far, and I recovered both of them. And Mike handily fixed the keyboard--a happy ending this time!