Madder Than A Mad Thing

I am so pissed off I could spit. Actually I could cry. My laptop is terminally ill. I've either got a hard drive failure or the laptop itself is knackered. I am cross because a) Colin only replaced the hard drive a couple of months ago, and b) the warranty for the laptop ran out on 15th April. I am trying desperately hard not to panic, but the fact is that although I backed up most of my layouts a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't backed up all my photos or other stuff. I am confident that more or less everything is recoverable, but I am thinking mainly of the huge amount of kits I have downloaded recently, my CT stuff which I desperately need to do, and just the fact that I am lost without my laptop. By the way, I'm typing this on the computer in the dining room.

My most immediate problem, however, is that I am supposed to be doing some work for Ioannis which I promised to get done tonight. I know it's not necessarily a huge deal if it doesn't get done tonight, but I hate to let anyone down, and I wanted to get this finished (there's probably a couple of hours of work to be done) so that we could get on and get the project finished this weekend. I now have to wait for Colin to get home from work (at whatever time that is going to be) so that he can have a look at the laptop for me and either fix it or declare it dead. It's the not knowing that is the problem. That and the fact that we don't have Photoshop on this computer here, so I can't scrap. Theoretically I could do this work for Ioannis on this computer, but the data I need to enter is all very tightly packed onto A4 sheets and I need plenty of space to lay the pages out so that I can use a ruler to keep a check on where exactly on the page I am, and this computer is on a very small desk thing with no room for a cup of coffee let alone a sheet of paper. Thank God the failure didn't happen last night when I was halfway through my 5 (yes, 5!) hours of data input. And thank God (again) that I have been paranoid and e-mailled the database to myself at work (from my BT account, which is webmail, hence not stored on my laptop), so at least the database is accessible from any computer. Phew!

I suppose that only leaves a bit of aimless web surfing to be done, or I could blog for several hours (but then we'd all be bored). But for once, I actually think I might do something sensible and go to bed. I could do with a good night of sleep for a change, as I've not been sleeping well recently, and I've had some late nights and early mornings to contend with.

I still can't help feeling guilty (and bad) that I won't get the data put on tonight. So, Ioannis, even though it's not my fault that I can't get it done tonight, I feel incredibly bad and I'm really really really really really really really sorry. And why I put that in, I don't know, cos he doesn't have my blog address so he'll never read it.

Right! Bedtime!