And yes, that blog title is for the other three people who might experience this issue in the next five years.

I had it all planned out. Midnight video link with Germany, wrap up some Tableau dashboards using data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, draft a post about it, and get a few hours down before heading into the city for a few meetings at the university.

I wake up and notice my Microsoft Surface had done a restart overnight. Not uncommon, I give it a stare to log in using facial recognition. This part is always hit and miss, as I feel facial recognition success rates are negatively correlated with all-nighters and hangovers. It’s like a comforting friend reminding us to look after ourselves.

I notice something is not right when I begin the morning routine of news review and data mining. The keyboard’s not working. Sort of. Stuff happens when I hit the keys, but not what you expect.

Long and ordinary story short, the Surface thinks the alt key is locked in place. I go through the process of troubleshooting – hitting keys, attempting to use the screen keyboard, restarting, reinstalling drivers, sacrificing animals, rolling back updates, focusing on the breath, a clean re-install, holding my breath, wiping the drive, and a few phone calls to Microsoft support. Problem is still there and I now have a support ticket to get the thin silver brick replaced.

Not sure how it happened, but the end result is a 10 hours interruption. Thankfully I have a spare laptop laying around to get me by while I wait for the replacement and a bunch of hard drives to move files around that aren’t backed up in the cloud.

It made me realise how the computer has evolved as a critical function of work. Research, data mining, written and video communication, managing, analysing – it is inconceivable to return to pure paper-based forms for many of these functions for any work that extends beyond a physical place.

It also made me do an audit on the tools of the trade, of which there are many. The re-install process is significant. You don’t notice you rely on so many different pieces of tech until you go to digitally reach for something habitual and realise you need to download it, find the registration key, get the environment set up, etc. the next few days will be starts and stops to get the environment back up.

Finally, it is a good chance to determine what I am and am not using and get a clean start as the digital clutter does tend to collect around the virtual desktop.

All that said, I am very fortunate that data was not lost and I am back up and running. Also grateful for fast internet as between installation downloads, recovery files, and online backups I am passing around a few hundred gig.

I will now need to find those 10 hours somewhere over the weekend and get back to my writing and publishing routine. I bet there’s an app for that.