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So I redid all my work. And then, of course, it happened again. Oho, you think, serves you right. No, I say: I was careful to have emacs back up the file when I put in significant changes, the second time around. So, yes, it somehow managed to kill the backups, too.
I am sad to report that this, after all the other little badnessess of the last several days, blew a fuse. I lost my cool for a brief time, surprising and maybe disturbing my housemates and also J-who-was-visiting, for I am not known to display much in the way of negative emotion. The total of my anger release was this: I voluntarily used "fucking" (in its cuss-word sense) in a sentence describing my file loss, and a little later I said "RRAAR" (in its literal sense) and slammed my door. Then I said "sorry" and lay silent and still on my floor for a time. While I did this, M emailed me to ask if I was OK, because she is smart and knows that was the way to contact me, given everything, though I was a few feet away. This prompted me to get up and apologize to everyone, everyone insisted that all was well, and everything was all right after that.
J-w-w-v would want me to add that the phrase "emacs ate my file" is like saying "Harvard Square swallowed up my car". In other words, blaming something at too narrow a scope.
Update: Andy tells me that what happened with my computer shouldn't have, were everything sane. He's right, too, but the fact remains that accidentally insane things in programming (which I do more than I care to recall) can cause my computer to blow up so disastrously. I should probably double my RAM before trying a stunt like that again.
Nobody at Minas Morgul uses cuss-words very often, really. One time M used the Friendly Word to describe her feelings for a dessert that she had made. And really, nobody could disagree with this, because she made enough for everyone, and it actually was really good.
Car: I had it towed away early this afternoon to ABJ Auto Repair, which has received props from relevant locals. The AAA-summoned tow driver tried to talk me into taking the car to his garage instead, saying that ABJ was very busy while his place could fix me up real quick-like, but I stuck to my original plan, to his disappointment. I hope I did the right thing. I also hope the thing will be done by T-day. We'll see what happens.
Update: I called the garage this afternoon to make sure that they got my car OK, and it happened that they'd already examined it, determined that the shift cable was bad, and ordered a replacement. I don't know what a shift cable is, but I can at least determine through Google that isn't not terribly expensive. Since my car went from happy la-la to neener within a matter of hours, I am optimistic that this will prove to be the single failed part.
Socially, I feel now as I did months ago while P&X was wrapping up: starting to feel frantic about catching up with all my friends, and that's a good feeling, because that means I'll probably do something about it. Just the same, I'm geeting panicky because I've inevitably lost track of where people's lives have got to while I've been swaddled in book-imposed hermetics (twice). I want to say to everyone: Wait, wait, please go back to the way you were last March or so, OK? Or the March before that, if you can swing it. Ugh.
It falls back to me to start writin' some mail or whatnot. yes, yes...
Not helping: Fallout 2 has gotten good again. Once I lucked out of getting killed in the stupid, overpowered wilderness, I fell into a very engaging plotline, and this soaked up many hours that I should have spent taking care of all the catching-up.
Most of the game's writing is very good, and some of it is backed up by really impressive voice acting. Interestingly, I can pick out different writing styles among the game's big library of NPC conversational trees (of which there are many, and since my main character has a maxed-out charisma score, nearly all of the possible dialog paths are open to me), which are distinct enough from the game's usually strong writing to suggest that different individuals were responsible for creating them.
Most notably, a couple of the conversations have some basic and unfortunate stylistic and sometimes even punctuation issues that don't show up elsewhere, while others are grammatically sound but trite, offering your character nothing but a variety of long-winded and sarcastic responses. They probably seemed quite funny to the writer, but just sound irritating to me, especially since I'm trying to play my character as a sincere and subtle catalyst, and being forced to act like a snotty loudmouth, just because those are the only on-screen options, irks me. This includes one particular conversation that's an involved in-joke about Magic: The Gathering. Thankfully, it's a very minor side-thing that you can ignore entirely, but happening across it is rather mimesis-busting. I become aware that I'm reading some kid's interactive fanfic about playing Magic with post-nuclear zombies, while both you and the zombies act like parodies of typical Magic players. Blat.
Not really complaining about the quality... just thought it was interesting that stinky writing stood out not because it's a hallmark of the game (it isn't) but because a little bit stands out starkly against the rest of the game's writing. That's too bad.
It's worth mentioning that the Fallout 2 instruction manual contains two recipes in an appendix, a little reward for being the rare sort of gamer who actually reads the manual, I guess. One of them is for a giant pancake. I should try making it. Maybe this weekend.
I'm impressed that Apple's spell checker includes "mimesis".