Ah, Typical

So, last night, we had a couple of piss cutter rainstorms roll through. The first was a "strong, but not severe" thunderstorm, the last was, apparently, a severe thunderstorm, as according to the National Weather Service. I was rushing about trying to get the trash gathered up when I heard the heavens open up and inundate the north Durham area with canids and felids of various sorts.

As I was typing merrily along on Chapter 31 (it's not that I'm done, but I really began to see how I wanted to end the story as I sat down with a list of characters and decided their fates), the donder and blitzen were getting pretty intense, so I decided (after checking on the children to see if they were frightened half to death) that I would pack up and save my stuff. Instead of typing further, I decided to play Civilization III until the storms blew through, at which point I would suspend my game, gather the trash, and try to get one, maybe two more pages written.

Along about 11:30 or so, the storms finally passed and the rain died down. Now, rather than save my game, I decided to leave my industrious little workers building roads and other pieces of infrastructure that would help my empire's monetary wealth accumulate to the point where I could negotiate another cheap technology steal from the Egyptians. I was having a really good game playing as the Greeks, so I went about my business, carrying all the trash to the curb. As I was downstairs setting up my coffee pot for this morning's brewings, the power flickered enough that the answering machine in the living room erased and needed resetting. No big deal, I thought, as most of the clocks were alright. All of the alarms would still be set.

However, I came back upstairs to find the computer screen black. Again, no problem I thought. At this point, it was about ten till midnight, so I just turned the monitor off and headed off to fantasize about lost opportunities with Olivia Martin bed. My wife came home at the typical time (maybe a little earlier) and went to do the online bill pay on the computer.

One problem: the computer won't come on. The surge protector was fine, the monitor worked fine, but the computer was off. Our phone and cable were out, so I thought maybe that had something to do with it. The phone was on this morning, but still no computer.

So, here I am, stuck in the world with no computer, three nearly completed novels sitting on my hard drive (not to mention one kickass game of Civilization III featuring the Greeks) and all of the other files that go with them (lineages, images of coats of arms, house names, word counts). I'm a bit frustrated. However, this might offer an opportunity to get a newer, faster model. Who knows? The only problem is, I still have no idea how to get the old stuff off the hard drive if the computer itself won't come on.