It has been a lousy two weeks, one that has challenged mightily my natural good cheer. I won’t even go into the worst of it, at least right now. Maybe next time. No, for now let’s just concentrate upon the merely irritating.

Technology — my friend, my lover, my goombah, my bro — turned around and snakebit me last week on two fronts. The first was my laptop. I was in the middle of a story, working toward a deadline, when things started to…freeze up. Everything. All of my efforts to correct were rewarded with an electronic megabit middle finger salute in the form of a series of pop-up boxes with cryptic error messages along the lines of “the application at 0xc000000005x4l would not register because you are an assh…” or words to that effect. I called a friend of mine, one of the most brilliant minds on the planet in terms of computers and writing code, and he patiently walked me through a test or two (“How comfortable are you with removing a memory chip from your computer? Hello? Hello?”) and determining what the trouble was (Computer Alzheimer’s = corrupted memory). I got over my aversion to unscrewing the back of my laptop (I use a screwdriver to retrieve paperclips from the keyboard, and pick my teeth with a safety pin, so hey, why not?) and found out that you can actually remove one (but not both) memory chip from your computer at a time. And, you can even write on an otherwise useless computer, utilizing safe mode. I’m doing it right now as I’m waiting for my laptop’s new memory chips to arrive.

The second was related to my home’s air conditioning system, which was newly installed three years ago. I turned it on this past week when the temperature hit ninety degrees, and it responded by serving up a big foaming mug of “F@#k y#$, Fatboy.” The repairman who installed it has been out four times since then and it still will not work properly. The outside compressor continues to run after the inside blower motor stops. This causes ice to form on the compressor wires, quite a sight when it’s 89 degrees in the shade. Sometimes the blower motor will start up for a few seconds, then shut down, even when the system has been turned off. Haunted. I got online (with my smart phone, since the computer is not working) and discovered that I have plenty of company, consisting of folks who bought the same unit I did from the same manufacturer, and who are having the same problem. I won’t say the manufacturer’s name, by the waym but if you were to guess that it is the antonym of “bad guy,” and is the same as the last name of a well-known actor, you wouldn‘t be wrong. When I purchased the system three years ago, seldom was heard a discouraging word. Now? There are a bunch of angry people out there, and that guy in the front of the pack, with the pitchfork and the torch, knocking on the castle door with the big ‘G‘ on it, would be me. If you need a new unit, and your repairman, when discussing a replacement, mentions an air conditioning/furnace unit manufactured by a company whose name is the generic term for a hero, run.

So what does any of this have to do with a blog titled The Kill Zone? Simple. It’s 90 degrees in the house, and I’m ready to commit murder. Actually, what this has to do with a writer’s blog is that you can’t rely on technology. Air conditioning aside, back up your work. If you are an aspiring author, back up every word you type to an external hard drive and do it weekly. A 1T external hard drive can be had for less than one hundred dollars. Better yet, back your work up on a thumb drive daily. Thumb drives can be had for the price of a paperback. It doesn’t take all that long to do either back up; take the time to do it and do it. I have manuscripts and documents and legal forms and almost 100g of music and another 50g of pictures and video, much of it nigh on replaceable, and I have everything backed up twice on two separate external hard drives. I was able to reboot a New Orleans musician’s career because I had all of his music — every one of his compositions — backed up. When he called me in tears after Hurricane Katrina flooded his home and ruined his computer, his CDs, and all of his cassette tapes,including dozens of compositions that we was working on for soundtracks and commercials, I was able to give him one bit of good news: his work of some fifteen odd years was preserved. Don’t lose yours. It could be the most important few minutes of your workday and workweek that you spend.