Broken Windows

“That’s a lovely computer you have there. Be a shame if something … happened to it.”

— Windows Update, December 12, 2012

In a sign that computers are growing self-aware, my machine decided to kill itself by downloading the latest updates for Windows Vista.  Those updates promptly trashed the system*.  The past two days have been spent backing up data, reinstalling, restoring, and fixing bugs.  By tonight I hope to actually be able to use the machine for something other than web browsing.

My best guess is that the computer has had its fill of 2012.  That makes two of us. I am very much looking forward to putting this year behind me.  It started off pretty good and there’s been some highlights but the last six months have been a serious drag.  On the plus side, things are starting to look up.

Work is progressing as it can and not only is there a light at the end of the tunnel but we can actually see the source.  That’s a major uptick.  It also helps that the semester has finally ended (last day of finals was Thursday).  This means we have a couple of weeks of relative calm.  I say relative because we are still open for business and have plenty of stuff to get done.

On the writing front, the query letter has gone out to my top four agents.  One rejection has already been received (I expected that) and once I manage to get Office reinstalled on the computer, I’ll send out queries to another agent or two.  Maybe I’ll even get a bit of writing done.

*knocks on wood*

* The updates problem is one that I’ve found information about back to 2007. I suspect I just got unlucky in this case and had a catastrophic failure.  It happens.