PANIC!

My hard drive at work is toast!

And all my back up efforts are futile as I have somehow backed up important information incorrectly.

Gah I feel so stupid.

Gah! All that information the boss has kept for like 30 years is on that hard drive!

The boss is out of town, he comes back in two days! What do I do?!

I'm panicking, and if I'm panicking, that means the boss will panick like 10x more than me. He panicks when there isn't a common somewhere sometimes, he panicks when one word is misspelled or something!

I can't tell him I lost everything he's done the past 30 years over the phone while he's with his family. His wife still has to travel many hours back home with him! I can't do that to her.

There's going to be so much yelling and so much blame this week. This is not going to be a good week.

I called the IT guy and he came over and said my hard drive was fried. He asked about my back ups and looked and found they were useless cuz I did it wrong. Gah! He took the CPU/hard drive to his place and used some machine and he called to say he got it up and running long enough to back up everything he could get, so I'm assuming he got most of the information, at least the important information I failed to back up. So that's good. Didn't totally lose everything. Still feel stupid tho.

I was only worried about Quickbooks and the documents, but he backed up Outlook and other things and I then I freaked out cuz when I did back ups I never thought about backing up Outlook! I feel so stupid! Why haven't we joined the cloud like everyone else?! The first time I'm going to do if I get that information back is back it up correctly!

Speaking of joining this century..... I still had Windows XP which isn't supported anymore so we have to upgrade to Windows 7. But everything we have, software wise, isn't compatible with 7, so we have to upgrade ALL our software. So a new CPU, a new hard drive, new operating system to upgrade to 7, new software programs, and hopefully transferring all our old info into the new software doesn't destroy everything. A pain in the butt for me and like two grand for the boss!

And I need a computer before he gets back in two days! He freaks out leaving the office, in his exagerated mindframe "I'll be gone for a week!" It's four days he's gone. He freaks out and comes in at like 5am the next day after he returns home. He bellyaches all day long at how busy he is and can't take phone calls or new clients and yadda yadda and by 11am all his work is done and he has nothing to do and I find him reading the newspaper or something.

But if he came back and finds my computer is toast and I can't type or use a computer in any way to assist him that day, before he even knows what he needs to do, he'll totally jump the gun and prolly have a stroke. I swear my goal as an employee is to attempt to keep the boss alive and not let him get stressed enough to have a stroke or heart attack. Mainly so I can keep an income, but still.... But this is not helping!

So how do I start that conversation when I get ahold of him on his vacation? "Remember a month or two ago when came in and said my computer still runs XP and I need to upgrade to 7? And you said yeah yeah whatever, I'll call the IT guy and you never did? And I said if I didn't upgrade or do something with the computer soon it might just die one day? And you mumbled something like 'yeah yeah yeah' again. And then I said "Okay, this is just me covering my butt so you can't yell at me when the computer dies." And you nodded nonchantly and went back to reading your paper or something? You remember that?"

So it was panic time for an hour or two this morning wondering if the IT guy can get anything off my fried hard drive. I think he got it tho. I think we are good. We just have to spend lots of money to upgrade and get a whole new computer basically. Its more of a pain in the butt for me cuz I have to adjust to the new software and operating system. More mone to get software for an old program 7 doesn't really work with anymore. Who does WordPerfect anymore? Might as well learn Word again if it feels like a total wipeout and redo.

I just have to call the boss and tell him his computer died and ask for money, like only two grand, so I can attempt to get a new system/computer up and running before he gets back into town.....

Piece of cake.