Last weekend, I had a small setback in my self-pub plans. The goal was to finish the Kindle formatting and move on to print and/or ePub research. Instead, I got to spend the weekend setting up a new computer. My old computer, which is about 5 years old, had started freezing up on me ever since a storm last week. We had a momentary power outage – enough that everything electronic shut off – so I think there was enough of a surge, even with my surge protector, that something happened to it. I kept having to reboot it, and at one point it started doing a CHDSK, so I let it go to see if it would help. It found some bad sectors (I forget the exact error message now), and some online searching led me to many forums where people with similar CHDSK results were told their hard drives were about to die. Cue my panic, as naturally, it had been a while since I last backed up my files. All the work I’d been doing on my novel – multiple edits, html formatting for Kindle, cover art, etc. – was in danger of being lost.
On the bright side, I’ve been looking for an excuse to get a new desktop, so it wasn’t completely bad news. I was lucky that whatever’s wrong with my old comp isn’t quite so bad yet that it can’t run, so I was able to copy all of my files onto my external drive and save everything. Then it was off to Best Buy, where I spent far too many hours comparing desktops (not to mention also going to other nearby stores, but I always tend to end up at Best Buy). I’m picky about computers. I usually prefer my processors to be Intel rather than AMD or the others, though I don’t really know why. My laptop is AMD and it’s perfectly fine. But then, I don’t use my laptop for anything too heavy. My desktop gets a good workout when I’m doing graphic design, so I wanted to be sure it could handle it all. I ended up with [warning: this is where I let my inner computer geek out]a Gateway that has 6MB of RAM a 3.2ghz dual-core Pentium Intel processor and 1TB hard drive. And it’s smaller than a normal desktop, so it’s all cute and fits on top of my desk rather than on the floor at my feet (like the old one did), where I’d have to lean down and fumble in the shadows every time I wanted to plug in a flash drive or memory card. I love it.
Unfortunately, upgrading computers is tedious and time-consuming. So I ended up spending all weekend getting my files transferred and my programs installed. I’ve had some other personal tasks to attend to as well, which has made me put the self-publishing goal on hold for a few more days. Hopefully by next week I can be back to my normal routine and finally get some of this done!
It also isn’t helping that I’ve decided a large part of the last few chapters needs to be rewritten. *sigh*
Oh! I do have a Twitter now, though. I’m still getting set up there and finding people to follow. Haven’t had as much time, obviously, but it’s another thing I plan on doing more of next week. I’m @AllisonKraft there.
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