Tonight, after the shine wore off of Judge Judy and George Carlin clips, I set about rehabbing my computer a bit. I have a slightly ancient but incredibly agreeable Fujitsu Lifebook - a sleek little workhorse of a computer, really. I'll make it last forever if I can (whereas I was secretly relieved when my last computer - a Sony Vaio - was stolen. But I digress.)
First, I cleaned off my desktop. I love a clean desktop, as well as the swoosh! sound of emptying the recycling bin.
Next, I dug around in my folders, discovering many old items (the complete contents of the personal website I ran in high school and a bit into college? A hundred pictures of my cat? Oh yes!) before deciding whether to burn them onto a CD, keep them where they were, or send them to the (swoosh!) recycling bin.
Next, I found a blank CD and backed up some recent files. It's quite amazing to me that since I graduated from college, the number of important files I'm saving on my computer has dropped to nearly zero. Partially, it's because my computer is now mostly used for pleasure. But I've also shifted much of my data storage online. Photos go onto Flickr, for example, and all my inane ramblings get saved to Blogger. Score!
Then, I dug around the huge spindle of CD I have in the credenza. The CDs contain everything from old family photos to newspaper articles (I was a very prolific journalist back in the day) to movies like "Clueless" and "Moulin Rouge."
What I was really looking for, of course, was my old sociology classwork - in particular the paper - the culmination of ten weeks' worth of field work - I plan to include with grad school applications. I've looked for the hard copy, graced with an A+ from my professor, in my dusty old files, to no avail. I was hoping and praying I hadn't done something stupid, like deleted the electronic copy. Y'all can breathe easy, because I found the paper, along with all of its associated notes (which I typed, of course, several times a week while completing my field work). I'm still holding out hope I can find the hard copy, though. Why in the world would I have thrown away an A+ paper?
Also, my poor old workhorse of a computer needs a new fan before it burns either itself or me, and I want to scrub it a little before I take it to the repair place, because I know what those technicians do to peoples' files (summary: they examine them, laugh heartily, and save the really embarrassing stuff to their own machines.)
Anyway, consider this your friendly reminder to back up your files, clean your desktop and maybe even run Ad-Aware while you're at it. God, I'm a nerd.
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