I've Fallen and I Can't Get Up?

My computer crashed Sunday night! Right after I published my blog about Sarah Palin, I closed Blogger and noticed that the caricature I used had accidentally become my desktop background.
Two seconds later I received one of those scary Fatal Error messages, and this time it was real. None of the tricks I have learned over the years were working. I had a full-blown computer CRASH on my hands.


Now far be it from me to assign any paranormal powers to the ex-governor of Alaska, but something happened with that picture. You are probably thinking that there must have been a worm or a virus attached to that caricature. It's possible, I guess. I gave it the proper attribution at the bottom of my post, trying to avoid being zapped for using the drawing illegally.
But, somehow, the darned thing took me out of business until just about an hour ago.

Computers can be evil things. It took about a nanosecond to miss-hit the key that sent that drawing to my desktop. It has taken the greater part of two days for me to get it back up and running the way it should. And I am still two days away from restoring all the files and settings, which at least I have, thanks to several previous crashes and the lessons they taught. I now have an online backup service for just these occasions (and I seriously recommend that you do the same.) I had 33GB of files on this computer before the crash, and it takes hours to restore them. Without the backup service, I would be sunk.

I'm pretty proud of myself for having the knowledge and the patience (my sister calls it stubbornness or plain craziness) to work through this challenge. I had to start over with a totally blank computer. I had to clean the entire system with three different anti-spyware/malware/virus software titles before I could be sure I was out of the woods. There were a few moments in the process that I feared I had killed the whole machine, and I began thinking about what magic I would have to work to buy a new one. Life without my computer is out of the question. That's how much of a geek I have become.