Power Outage
When I was a kid, I loved power outages. I loved having to use candles instead of lights. I loved the difference of it. I loved the otherworldliness of it. In a lot of ways I still love it. Power outages can be a great way the universe forces us to step back from our normal lives and slow down for a little while. I do not like power outages at work.
We have had a few power outages in the time we've been in this new location, some of the planned, most of them not. When everything goes down, we have to make sure everything is unplugged so there's not a shock when the power comes back on.
Today we had a brownout. In many cases, this is a best-case scenario. Things do not shut all the way off. It's just a quick power cycle.
Today, I came in a little excited to do work. I checked the analysis computer and the large data analysis I had been waiting for had just finished. I proceeded to save it so I wouldn't have to run it again. It can take more than five days to run. It is a lot of data so it can take a while to save. I was ten minutes into it saving when the brownout happened. The whole computer shut down. I can't even find the file it was supposed to be saving to, and it had been previously saved. I can't find it anywhere, which means the computer shutting down during saving probably corrupted the original file. Which means I have to start everything over from scratch again.
I screamed at the universe. I don't have to contend with that amount of backtracking very often. It's not a person. It's just data. It's just data. It can be redone. It's just time. Time cannot be replaced though. Time is the most valuable thing I have.