A message of caution

Please people, don't be like me. Back up your work in several forms and do it often!

I have been plagued with evil computer mishaps for several weeks now. The evil computer mishap struck again yesterday. Apparently, while I did not have a computer virus, a hacker (cracker?) of some sort was taking advantage of a vulnerability in my O.S. and flooding my router with something. I'm not sure what as at this point in the discovery process, I was fighting back tears because all of this meant that I had to wipe my hard drive and reinstall windows. Again. Yes, my friends, again. I was *just* starting to get over the distress and damage from the last time I had to do this...and now I had to do it again!

Ok. Now, let me set the stage: My laptop has NO floppy drive! ARGH. We have NO blank CD's lying around (big mistake). I am completely unable to access my router which not only means I am unable to access the internet, but my local network as well, which means there is NO WAY AT ALL to get my writing off my computer and into a safe place. I had no other choice but to wipe my hard drive and say goodbye to my novel. Luckily, I hadn't written a great lot.

So, now my word count is at zero (I spent all day yesterday fixing my computer) and I'm getting ready to fix that. Back up. Back up. Back up!