Operating System not Found

It happened. Last week. Oh, yes. My worst fears realized. See title above. Complete and utter chaos here in Ukraine because "myself" couldn't leave the damn computer alone. Here goes...

My good nephew gave me a 500GB external hard drive at Christmas. The thing was beautiful. Loaded up with almost 400 GB of American TV and movies, British sitcoms and Masterpiece Theater. A wonderous collection..stupendous, even, considering the fact that it contained all 7 seasons of "Star Trek Voyager" and every single Star Trek movie on the planet. It had "The Tudors" and "Breaking Bad", "The Walking Dead" and "It's Always Sunny in Philiadelphia".  *sigh*

When I got home to Ukraine I loaded up everything I could from my computer...sure that if anything would die, it wouldn't be my hard drive...no! It's brand spanking new. It will last years!  My computer had been full for a long time and dragging it's heels so I relieved it of its heavy burdon of all my Peace Corps files and materials. And everything Ukraine. Pictures. Lots of pictures.  *sigh*

One day last week I plugged in the hard drive and the computer could not read the drivers. I unplugged it, restarted the computer a few times...nothing. I did every diagnostic on the website for the drive...nothing. I read forum after forum trying new things, looking for a patch, a fix, anything to get my files back. Anything and everything. Well, I found a fix, all right. It was a fix that everyone on the forum swore by...it cleans up your drive and eliminates the problem! it said. (Hmmm...I gotta try this...it's my last hope, I'm thinking). Well, it cleaned out my drive all right...cleaned out the hard drive on my computer! Everything! In a blink of an eye...gone! I had a black box. An empty black box with an empty black screen with the words "Operating System not Found".

I hate that I am impatient. I hate that I am obsessive. I wish I could turn back the clock (Brother! Where is Superman when I need him?).

The following day I met a friend who went with me to talk the guys in the print shop.  They also sell and fix computers. What other choice did I have? I lost contact with the world...I lost all my files...pictures, music, documents...everything! So, these guys are pretty nice to me. I get copies in their store a lot and a few speak a little English. (I think this was the scariest thing...not knowing where to go or how to explain what I did). Luckily, I have my friend Julia to help me in the community when I need it. She is a keeper! Anyway...in 3 days the guys managed to fix my computer and retrieve my files...not all of them, mind you, but a good chunk. They had tried to get Microsoft to load up my computer with the lost operating system using my registration numbers, but it didn't work and I am not suprised. A lot of Ukrainians are blocked from American sites. So, the guys loaded up my computer with their Vista program (my original operating system) and it worked fine except for one miner detail..everything was in Russian! So, I pack up my computer and the little tech boy, who then accompanied me to my apartment to make sure the system could be changed to English, and that my internet would accept my new operating system. A house call! Wowee!

In the meantime, the guys back at the store were busy loading up all the recovered data to a drop box site...and I mean ALL of it! There is 80 GB of storage on my laptop...there was 100GB of stuff. Go figure. (A side note...they were not able to fix the external...a BIG bummer, to say the least).

Well, all's well that ends well..I got everything going and many files and pictures back, although unfortunately it seems as if all the newest things are missing. The kicker is this....having to go through over 6000 pictures and not all of them are my photos...many are useless bits picked up from random internet browsings (no...I did NOT load up these silly pictures...I remember looking at the websites, however.  SO much for having the cookies blocked...) and buttons from loaded up sites. 

Even worse is having to open up, label, and save all my document in new folders...all 1018 of them!Each document takes approximately 30 seconds. Huh. (Did I mention I had no document reader on my system? I had to load up a 30 day trial of Microsoft Office...I am not familiar with this version...there seems to be a lot more to do with this one.) SO...thinking that this process should take me approximately 15 years at the rate I am going because all the document and pictures are randomly filed and labeled "Data 1, Data 2", I decided to write to my nephew to go into my desktop at home and load up the documents from there into a virtual file cabinet that I can access from here. ( I recall bringing home a loaded up flash drive with the latest documents to update the desktop...I hope I am not dreaming this)

SO, now I wait for the documents to turn up in Drop Box. And I am slowly picking my way though
100 GB of mostly crap. Ugh. So much for the mighty external hard drive. From now on, my back up will be in the virtual world. Count on it.

Spootnik

I've really come to look forward to my community English club every Sunday afternoon. Since September we have been meeting at the local youth library and I've gotten to know a few of the regulars pretty well. We are not a big group, but there is enough of us to have a good group discussion each week. The weekly regulars are Max, Valentina, Julia, Veronica. Alex, and lately a new regular, Lera. Sprinkled in with us are sometimes 10-15 others, but the regulars are always there, week after week.

Sometimes we learn things about each other's culture that is really amazing. For one thing, our histories are completely different, especially for those of us who grew up during the Cold War. We each have learned real history through the eyes of our countries, and it is so vastly different as to sometimes astound me. And them. It's true that history belongs to the victor.

Yesterday's revelation was no different in that history is different for each of us, but this time our discussion was hilarious. The topic was museums and Valentina was telling the group about a Moscow museum that featured space flight. I asked her what they had on display for the first Satellite in space...Sputnik. The group looked at me with blank faces. I declared "Don't even tell me you have never heard of Sputnik"! It was first thing in space...and it was Russian! It took a few moments for the fog to clear, then all at once the group erupted in laughter. Now I was confused. "What's so funny"? I asked. After a time, everyone stopped roaring and I heard the tiny voice of Veronica saying "Spootnik? Do you mean Spootnik?" Then  it was MY turn to laugh. After all those years of hearing about Sputnik, we Americans had gotten it wrong, and no one bothered to correct our mis-pronounciation. Ha! It was the Russians who had the last laugh, afer all.