So it must be some kind of poetic justice that the first real attempt at posting to this blog resulted in a crash.

You know that experience you've all had when you first started working on a computer.... You work for hours on some homework project and you write and write and then something happens....the power goes off, ....you press the wrong button, ....the cat chases the dog and crashes into your computer table pulling all the wires out.... You know that experience., right?

It's like Kubler-Ross' Stages of Death. First, there is Denial. It's not possible. You look at the blank screen, "It's got to be here somewhere?"

Next comes Anger. You scream at the dog, shout at power company, beat your head on the keyboard.

Then there's Bargaining...my favorite..."Please, please, just give me one page, one sentence, one word,...one...one electron....!"

Then comes Depression. This can last a while. It can be followed by recurring nightmares and insomnia.

Finally, Acceptance, and with this perhaps an opportunity to learn from this experience.

You quickly learn to hit Ctrl-S about every 15 seconds to save what you are writing. You activate the "backup" feature of the software so it is automatically backing up your documents every 3 microseconds. And if you get really neurotic, you start making backup disks, and backups of backups. At one point I had my dissertation chapters on four sets of floppies and two computers. Just in case!

Well seasoned bloggers probably know that with these appliances there is no such save feature. Such was the case late last night when I poured my heart and soul into some highly creative message only to hit some combination of keys and the computer ate my blog.

Arrrggggg.

Well, my Acceptance was actually a form of intellectualization. I have convinced myself in the past 24 hours that what I had written was really crap and God was saving me from embarrassment.

We'll see. I'm gonna push the Publish/Post button now.

Wait, there's a Save as Draft button.....mmmmm, I wonder what that does...