Whew!

Lucille II, my laptop, is back. But dang -- it was a close one. We almost lost her.

I was upgrading to a new version of my operating system -- Ubuntu Linux "Feisty Fawn" to be exact -- when I lost power to poor Lucille during the upgrade. This is because I'm an idiot. Last Friday I finally downloaded all the files for the upgrade while I was at the redundantly-named Nina's Coffee Cafe but was running late to meet the lovely Erin and the okay-looking cK at a local watering hole so I stuck Lucille into my bag and scooted over there while she was still doing the upgrade.

Well, it seems Lucille took exception to this cavalier behavior because as I was socializing and flirting with every mammal that walked past me the poor little laptop was sucking up battery power until finally she threw up her arms in digust and went into cardiac arrest. With the upgrade process incomplete. Which means the laptop would not boot when I got home that night.

Now you may or may not know that I am something of a computer geek; I earned my living for many years doing programming. As a result, there was no excuse for me being such a dolt. But I was. And of course I didn't do a backup prior to the upgrade.

So I've been without a laptop at all for the last three days, let alone internet access and email. I nearly went postal. And I missed you all lots and lots. But today I finally got Lucille II all recovered and didn't lose the 3000 words I'd written in the Other Keys story, thankfully. I thought I had lost not only the story but the entire hard drive for a couple of days. Gleep.

So I am suitably chastened, but Lucille II is once again in fine fettle and ready to kick palabra. So I guess I need to write more stuff now!

You can expect a new post tomorrow. I apologize for the delay.

And... whew! Dodged a bullet that time.

-- Hulles