Busted!

It’s a sad Wednesday morning for me. Mostly because the night before really took out the best of me. I came home from work all excited about my new Photoshop project. I didn’t have much to do yesterday so I used the time to surf the net for tutorials on the use of Photoshop. I stumbled into these great site – www.good-tutorials.com they had links to many useful resources. I bookmarked some of the good projects and was all excited about trying them out at home.

The first step would be to load the site but of course I forgot what it was so I have to access my email. While doing that I started to look into the usual places for pictures to use for my project. Checked Miki’s My pictures, none there, checked Shared Docs My Pictures, none there too. Where the hell are all the Removable Media folders! I clearly remember finding them where they were the last time I downloaded pictures for use in my blogs. I wasn’t panicky yet but I knew something was off. I waited for Miki to enter the room and casually asked him where the picture folders where. And when he started to tinker the keys, my hunch was confirmed – they are all missing. I felt my knees weaken and my spirit shrinking.

Before wallowing in our depressed state, we had to assess the extent of the damage. After all, it might not really be that bad.

Step 1: Check folders one by one. None found.

Step 2: Search for files. None found.

Step 3: Check hidden files. None found.

Step 4: Check Photoshop Album Starter. Voila! There they are! Good sign

there. Try to copy files, missing. Try reconnecting files, missing. Try opening files using other applications, missing.

Wow, so much for desperate optimism! Damn! How could something stupid happen to overcautious individuals like us? Miki with all his experiments, downloading everything in the net to protect his computer from spywares, malwares, adwares, viruses, worms, bugs etc. etc. Miki get all protective about his laptop with Boz around. All those efforts, and still it was not enough. We failed to see that our protect-our-laptop-plan was not as impregnable as it appeared to be, it was still very much vulnerable to human curiosity! Damn!

After learning the extent of the damage, the next step was to figure out the who, what, when, where and hows of it all. Round up all possible suspects:

1. Who : Me

Last Use of PC: Saturday night

Purpose : Watch Click

Alibi : Didn’t touch anything else. I just turned off the

computer after using it.

Anomalies : none that I can remember

2. Who : Angel

Last Use of PC: Friday night

Purpose : Watch Harry Potter 4: Goblet of Fire

Alibi : Didn’t touch anything else. I just turned off the

computer after using it. Besides, Miki was there so she

didn’t have time to do something else. And she was

sleepy already. She has to be it was past midnight!

Anomalies : none that I can remember

3. Who : Miki

Last Use of PC: Just before going home

Purpose : **I don’t know**

Alibi : **I don’t know either. But I trust him not to sabotage

something this important. At least not intentionally**

Anomalies : Last time he checked ( after the Boz incident) hard disk

free memory around ~23 GB . When he checked last

Monday he checked he still had ~30 GB! Where did all

those files go?

4. Who : Sum-ag kids

Last Use of PC: Sunday Afternoon

Purpose : Watch Harry Potter 4: Goblet of Fire

Alibi : Don’t know. I was too busy doing my Boz chores that I

didn’t have the chance and the time to check on them while they were watching the movie. All I knew was when it was done, they called Miki to turn it off and to pack it away.

Anomalies : The laptop sensor thing ( I don’t know what it’s called

but I know it’s for what you use in lieu of a mouse) was already enabled when he got to the room, the laptop facing straight (the last time he remembered it was slanted).

Wow, so much for pinning it down to the obvious culprit. Damn! Damn! Damn! I’ve been young once and I understand where they are coming from but, man! To even think about doing it and keeping it to yourself? Sparing yourself of damage control? Of course, I am just venting it all out now. Any effort of getting the info from them would just be futile. Talk about self-preservation.

On second thought, what if the mysterious disappearance of files happened even before our weekend in Bacolod? What if Miki accidentally got rid of it? hay hay hay… there’s really no way I could tell. The damage has already been done.

We purchased a digital camera to capture the better moments of every day life, to record memories from celebrations, important events and rarely usual occasions! and we were able to do that for the longest time now. Now we have to restructure all those lost photos, check if we still have copies of them. Miki’s looking at a good 5 five months of photo and video files that we need to recover.

Still pays to be redundant.

Morals of the story:

1. Be Redundant. It’s counterproductive. But if you are not sure you can really protect yourself from the destructive forces of the universe. It’s the only way to go.

2. Be Afraid. I figured you can never be too sure about what will happen to you no matter how prepared you are. So always be on your toes!

Hay…. Life gets better with challenges!