For those that are paying attention, I missed February 22. It was the last Monday of the month and that marks “New Music Monday” around our house. Unfortunately, no new music was added during the month. Let me rephrase that. No new music was added that I remember explicitly making an attempt to acquire out of desire and need for something new. Instead, I was in recovery mode.

Here’s the reason: Flatten and reload.

Basically, my laptop decided that during one of my many late-night download fests of bit torrents that it was going to acquire some sort of debilitating malware/virus/self-destructing/registry editing code. Interestingly enough, it wasn’t even music I was downloading. It was a innocent exercise in trying to make my wife happy with yet another vampire-ridden form of television entertainment.

I knew it was bad when during the download even the multiple layers of protection on my system were brought to a screeching halt and nonoperational. I kept trying to scour the system, knowing that if I turned it off or rebooted, that would be the end of the laptop as I knew it. I kept at it and swore like a sailor. I eventually gave in and tried to reboot to the last know good configuration. I think it is safe to say that when you reboot and no reboot actually occurs, that is bad. The system wouldn’t even get past the splash screen. Suck balls.


Once or twice, I was able to get to the login screen but no further. It was inevitable. Rather than waste my colorful metaphors and curses on a reboot that was never going to succeed, why don’t I just flatten and reload the machine. A fresh install wouldn’t hurt. I routinely back up my hard drives but in the most recent past, I had acquired quite a substantial amount of new entries into our musical catalog. Furthermore, I had not backed these albums up on my external storage device. So I was facing two tons of lost music. Other files that were potentially lost had no bearing on my emotions, but the music loss was substantial.

After the reload, I spent most of the next week or so trying to repopulate the music directories. I tried piecing together what I remembered having. I slaved my MP3 player back on to the laptop as it had many music files that were lost in the viral contamination of my system. I drug those back over and rebuilt the archive of music. The others, I didn’t have backed up or on the MP3 player had to be reacquired online. Both legally and illegally.


To make matters more challenging, I had an overloaded work statement for the month:

I did a flatten and reload on the wife’s laptop. It didn’t have the viral symptoms that my laptop had. Hers was just overrun with stuff and needed to be wiped clean; I also took on two new challenging wheel designs for a client; Then began to rough out a new webpage for another client; I coordinated a surprise birthday party and invitation design for my father’s 70th throw down; Valentine’s Day (men around the world…you know the horror of this day); A major re-organization at my employer which has had everyone on pins and needles wondering the effectiveness of their work ethic and necessity of their existence; And the general day-to-day requirements of building with Legos and playing video games with Son #1.

February was busy and March is shaping up to be similar. With any luck, I won’t have flatten and reload anything other than my liver in the next month.