"What do you mean, never?"

[firstfrost]

So, my work machine (geskekelud) died on Friday. Today, they tell me that the drive is broken enough that it can't be mounted on a good machine. And they (for other values of they) tell me that my local files were never backed up. Now, I know I ran the backup GUI and selected directories and told it to go, but maybe there was some "yes, really" button I didn't click. I'm not usually inept at software, but it was long enough ago that I don't remember clearly.

There's not a lot gone. Old zephyr logs. Kludgey perl scripts that it would do me good to rewrite. justom's cycling archives and twe's mud (which I have to feel more guilty about losing).

But my copy of my thesis is gone, too. (Quotas were smaller then.) It was a stupid junky thesis, and I'm never going to be an immunologist again, and I didn't ever read it except to reference how to bibtex URLs for class help, but I'm still strangely mourning it. Like putting the cat to sleep at age twenty-one when she's gotten too old to walk or see or enjoy living any more. Except that's a stupid metaphor too.

Goodbye, little cat. Goodbye, stupid thesis that taught me I shouldn't be a scientist.

Damn.

Comments

[remcat.livejournal.com]

I lost the original X-ray films from my sequencing gels when we had that flood right after we moved into our house in Tewksbury. It was just my "Phase II" project, and it kind of sucked, and no one sequences DNA by hand anymore ... but I put 18 months of my life into that project, so it was sad.

Sorry about your machine, and anythign that turns out to be permanently lost.