Backup – A One-Act Tragedy

Don’t be discouraged by a failure. It can be a positive experience. Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterwards carefully avoid.

~ John Keats (1795 – 1821)

Dedicated, with apology, to The Holmes

BACKUP

An ordinary stage with a semi-circular riser left to right around a desk upon which sits a computer and monitor. The curtain rises revealing a green spotlight shining on the CPU. A white spotlight opens on stage left upon the riser, where a couple sits in two chair. The man is pretending to drive.

WOMAN

You know, we should probably back up the computer in my office. You need to show me how to do that when we get home.

As the woman says this, the man is singing along to a song in his head, oblivious.

MAN

I can do that. It’s probably a good idea.

Spotlight fades, and then opens on the narrator at the forefront of the stage. He is everyman, wearing loafers and a polo shirt.

NARRATOR

[spoken with a professorial and authoritative tone throughout] This is one of the most important, yet also one of the most neglected areas of computing. Backing up your data should be at the top of your computer maintenance list, right next to virus protection. Without data backup or virus protection, you are running the risk of losing your data. And it will happen, don’t think that you don’t have to worry about it.

Spotlight fades. The spotlight shining on the CPU changes from green to yellow. Then a while spotlight opens on center of riser, back stage, where the same couple lies in bed. She is playing Nintendo DS and he is reading a book.

WOMAN

Got an email from a friend today. Her computer crashed last night and she lost everything.

MAN

[never looks up from book] Hmm. That’s sad.

Spotlight fades, and then opens on narrator, same as before.

NARRATOR

Data loss can happen in many ways. One of the most common causes is physical failure of the media the data is stored on. You probably have everything saved on your PCs hard drive. That hard drive will not live forever.

Spotlight fades. The spotlight shining on the CPU changes from yellow to blood red. Then a while spotlight opens on stage right riser where the same couple are perusing a shelf lined with DVDs.

WOMAN

While we’re here, we should check on something to back up my pictures. I’d hate to lose them.

The man picks a DVD off the shelf.

[as an aside] Yeah, I’ve got one at home. [with excitement] Check this out! I’ve been dying to own this one!

Spotlight fades. and once again rises on narrator.

NARRATOR

Normally, hard drives will live for years without incident. But eventually they will die. It might happen gradually, by more and more bad clusters accumulating until most of the drive is unusable. Or it might happen suddenly, the hard drive just dies without warning.

At the word “suddenly” the light shining on the CPU extinguishes and the spotlight fades. The narration is completed in darkness. A beat after the narration ends, a crashing noise is heard. And then the monitor sitting on the desk shines blue. Another beat, and screams are heard from all corners of the stage. Curtain.

*****

This public service announcement brought to you by computer experts and smart people everywhere. And, more importantly, by the dumbest man alive.

Back up your data, people. NOW!

[Photo courtesy of Amazon]

Satellite

Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.

~ E.B. White

Everyone I know has either cable or satellite television. I imagine you do as well. Today, over at The Real World, Missy and I are discussing this topic. Is satellite/cable TV necessary? Is TV necessary? Stop by and share your thoughts . . .

El Toro of Love, and a Puppy!

And what’s romance? Usually, a nice little tale where you have everything as you like it, where rain never wets your jacket and gnats never bite your nose, and it’s always daisy-time.

~ D.H. Lawrence

I scored big time this Valentine’s Day when I picked up one of these for my lovely wife . . .

Spicy!

And that newborn I mentioned a while back?

Meet Lola!

Everybody loves her except Bubba, who, because he has a . . . thing . . . hanging down under, is often mistaken for mama.

Gotta run. Taking my better nature out for some ice cream.

In winter.

Yeah, we’re weird like that . . .

[Flickr photo is by marcdroberts and is protected]

40

Infatuation is when you think he’s as sexy as Robert Redford, as smart as Henry Kissinger, as noble as Ralph Nader, as funny as Woody Allen, and as athletic as Jimmy Connors. Love is when you realize that he’s as sexy as Woody Allen, as smart as Jimmy Connors, as funny as Ralph Nader, as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford – but you’ll take him anyway.

~ Judith Viorst, Redbook, 1975

It’s always a bit unsettling to learn the facts.

When it comes to most events, especially those of which we were never an integral part, we tend to carry around a romanticized set of mental images and ideas of how things went down.

To wit:

Consider this happy bunch of folks. Decked out in jet black suits and red, ruffled gowns. They’re smiling. All the ducks are in a row. Everyone just said “Cheese!”

Except this one:

That’s my Uncle Jerry. My dad’s brother. And he’s clearly not paying attention. Perhaps he’s daydreaming. Wondering when he’ll get to walk the aisle at his own wedding. Or, knowing my Uncle Jerry, odds are good that there’s a bacon sandwich somewhere close by and he’s contemplating a way to get to it. Rapidly.

Or maybe it was the terror he abided just getting to the church. For, as my mom told me just the other day, several days shy of forty years since the wedding of my parents, the weather did not cooperate.

According to the almanac information I Googled just this morning, the temperatures hovered in the low-to-mid 20s, and there was “Rain and/or melted snow reported during the day.”

Apparently, that doesn’t begin to cover it.

The rain? The melting snow? It froze. It took my grandparents over two hours to drive the seventeen miles from their door to the ceremony. Others arrived so unfashionably late that they ended up delaying the service almost thirty minutes.

I’d never heard this part of the story before.

And it might help explain that bewildered look my uncle is sporting in these very expensive wedding photos. Two hours in the car with my grandmother? Yeah, that’d do it.

With other parts of the story that led to this day, February 14, 1970, I am intimately familiar. That this was the second marriage for my father. His first ended just four months earlier when my mom passed away. My dad has shared with me bits and pieces of moments he just barely lived through during those four months, and they are dark and hellish.

Of these five people, let’s just say a majority of them didn’t really care to see this day happen. Things were going too fast. The silly kids weren’t ready. Only they weren’t kids. And they have made it.

Not that they haven’t had their share of challenges. Well, one handful in particular. See that dwarf in the front there, with the form-fitting brown suit?

With the finger in his eye? Yours truly. Apparently I was having none of that picture taking nonsense. Just show me the way to the Lincoln logs and no one will get hurt. Or have their big day ruined any further.

And, Oh! What a day! There was face-sucking . . .

. . . cake-noshing . . .

. . . and bouquet-tossing goodness.

This photo gets me every time. I can hear the laughter reverberating through the hall. The cackle that my cousin Retha must have let loose as she charged in. The sudden exhalations of joy as my mom tilted her head back and clapped her hands at the craziness of it all. She has always loved a good laugh.

I see what my dad saw in her. I mean, my GOD, just look at that smile!

Yet, I’ve seen her frown. And I’ve seen her cry. The kind of crying that starts deep inside and then just erupts in hot tears and words rendered unspeakable by pains not physical but universal. I caused no small amount of heartache over the years. But she is still here. She’s always been here. In my heart, where things are muddy at times but sunny on the days when I choose to remember that she loves me. To think about how she took me and my dad into her arms and gave us a home. Where that smile means we are cherished, honored, respected, and loved.

I shudder to think of where I’d be today if it weren’t for her.

For them, really.

They made it. The story is theirs to share. And I’m honored to have been a part of it.

For forty years.

And all the years yet to come . . .

So I Never Got to BlogHer

To cement a new friendship, especially between foreigners or persons of a different social world, a spark with which both were secretly charged must fly from person to person, and cut across the accidents of place and time.

~ Cornelia Otis Skinner, The Ape in Me, 1959

BlogHer. That annual get-together where bloggers from across the nation meet and greet one another, swap cards, and drink a lot.

It swung through my neck of the woods this past year and so I considered going. Only no one told me you had to register two years in advance. And spend lots of money. And drink a lot. So out of protest, I stayed home. Listened from a distance. Probably what I would have done had I actually been there, being a wallflower of sorts.

I just don’t do crowds. Much more my style is the informal rendezvous, somewhat haphazardly planned, with no fanfare and a very short agenda:

Meet up. Chat. Go home.

Ed and I had been planning just such an encounter, and we managed to pull it off Christmas week last year in Dayton, Ohio. His five kids, my four kids, some tagalong relatives, and an Air Force Museum seemed like the right amount of chaos for a lovely and lively time.

It just so happens that another blogging friend, one Daisyfae of Trailer Park Refugee, lives near Dayton, so she came along and brought a friend.

Headcount: Seventeen people, the majority under three feet tall. Did I say I’m not much of a crowd person? Ignore that part.

Highlights:

Ed and I met in the blogosphere because we both have daughters named Zoe. Zoë in his case. Mine has no umlaut. These two young ladies are only a month apart, and they hit it off like long-lost sisters reuniting over coffee. Nigh inseparable they were. The chatted about girl stuff and might have even noticed a plane or two hanging around.

That, my friends, is an SR-71 Blackbird. Daisyfae? She likes her some Blackbird. She saw it sitting there, all black and impressive in the hangar, and raised her arms in the air and exclaimed, “My God! Look at it! It’s like sex in the sky!” I interrupted her reverie for a picture . . .

Ed looked happy to be there for the most part . . .

. . . despite the fact that he’d spent the night before tending to his very sick child, wallowing in the sick that naturally spread his way as the morning progressed. Tucked in his back pocket is a map of the museum with all the restrooms highlighted in bright yellow. He’s a trooper, that Ed. He and his clan ended up leaving early so he could go home and pass out on the couch, curled up in a fetal position. We’ve agreed the next meet-up will be in a park. Lots of fresh air and plenty of places to hurl should the need arise.

After a quick tour through the exhibit on rockets and space travel, Daisyfae and I decided to pack up the remainder of the party and retire to the local Bob Evans for some lunch before heading home. I made a gift of some homemade Chex mix and, being the more stubborn of the two of us, she insisted on picking up the check. Being the least stubborn of the two of us, I let her. But next time, girlfriend? I’m buying.

***

Well, needless to say, I found myself hooked on meeting blogging friends. And it just so happened that my wife and I planned on taking the family to Minnesota to spend a week after Christmas. And pray tell what city should the road lead us through on our way to Points Northwest?

Madison, Wisconsin!

The thoroughly-cheesified Home of Maggie (Okay, Fine, Dammit), and a hop, skip, and a jump from Erika (Be Gay About It). After much emailing back and forth, trying to pick a time and a place to pull in for a pit stop, it was Erika’s wife Jenn who came up with Rocky Rococo’s, a pizza joint complete with a game room, comfy leather seats, and bottomless pitchers of pop. Or is it soda in Wisconsin? Regardless, it was perfect.

These are two of my blogging heroes. And yet meeting them felt completely . . . normal. Want to see my favorite picture?

Erika recently broadened her site to include a section titled BGAI Together, “a grassroots storytelling project where LGBTQ persons and their allies unite to counter adversity with positive stories of love and affirmation.” My daughter helped her design the badge for the site (you’ll find it in my sidebar, over there on the left) and here they are meeting for the first time. Notice how Erika, who is much taller than I ever imagined, gets down to Aryn’s level. Doesn’t stand over her, but instead allows Aryn to shine.

Erika’s heart is large, my friends. And meeting her in real life, hugging her neck, listening to her laugh, and sharing in her joy as she told the story of her and Jenn’s Christmas miracle, made this mid-trip rest stop a miracle all its own.

She also made me a “stud tape,” a two-disc set of some of her favorite music. It was the soundtrack for our trip, and I am now a huge fan of Band of Horses . . .

***

And then there’s Maggie.

We left Minnesota on the morning of January 1^st and planned to drive straight through. But, as you might have guessed, I have become a fan of sidetracking. I tweeted that I might be available for dinner, and Maggie wasted no time in inviting us over for ham sandwiches.

Only Maggie lives in . . . how did Sarah put it . . . oh yeah!

Waythefuckoutsville.

That’s somewhere along Country Road Death, as my kids now call that meandering road leading to her back porch. They also refer to her as Maggie in the Middle of Nowhere.

GPS be damned, we found it!

The kids romped and played and colored pictures. Ty impressed Maggie’s husband with his Rock Band skills. And Maggie’s husband laughed at me when I shed my coat and revealed my IPFW sweatshirt. Apparently they’ve experienced the suck that is IPFW Mastodon basketball.

We sat and talked for a long time. About blogging. About writing. About iPhones. And about ham. And then . . . glory of glories! I made it past the outer court and found myself worshipping in the inner sanctum.

Where this . . .

. . . begat this!

Maggie and I laughed until we cried. And then, my head, tummy, and heart full to bursting, I drove the clan home.

Notice my hat? That’s an SR-71 Blackbird.

Notice my Unibrow? Yeah, it’s back. And sexier than evah!

***

This is my first post in exactly one month. It was a planned hiatus. A chance to recalibrate my brain and settle a few things that needed settling.

While I was away, I missed you, dear Cheek Tweaker.

We might have crossed paths on Twitter or Facebook, but nothing compares to the interaction that happens here. Or over there, on your blog.

Meeting these friends in real life made this place so much more special for me. For here, because of this, across the accidents of time and space, I have found a few friends. And I am better for them . . .

***

Oh! Before you go . . .

Did I tell you about the newborn in our house? NO?! Well, you’re in for a treat . . .

[Flickr photo is by lepiaf.geo and is protected]