Capstone — Week 9

A Physical Visualization Exploration

SPRING BREAK!!!

Time to reset, refresh and renew!!??

Just in time. I feel like I am starting to unravel a bit. Up and down the rollercoaster I go, and up and down again and again. With only a couple of months remaining to reach the finish line (time is flying!!!), a moment to take a breath (just a moment) was welcomed!

I am sure you all can relate. The project, the data, the deadliness, the desire to do great things, or at least more than passable, much more than just passable, are always dancing around in my waking and now even sleeping mind. The pressure is on. And add in an especially challenging previous couple of weeks with work and midterms and life and health and family and on and on; I was teetering on the balance beam, took a spill. I think we are all familiar.

So what do we do? Take a nap? Maybe. And then we lift up that chin, slap on a smile, think positive thoughts, get a plan in motion (any plan, just get moving) and charge ahead.

But for this week, for a moment, it was time to step back for a few days, clear my mind and regroup. This doesn't mean I had all week to play. I have a full-time job, freelance work, family, life, and the list goes on. I am sure you can relate.

But moments, there were moments, a brief intermission where it almost all faded away, distant visions of data, distant thoughts of prototypes, worries of others’ opinions, success, failure, all fading away. There were blissful moments of binge-watching The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, taking a much-needed nap, catching up on my yoga practice, wearing PJs in the afternoon and a stroll in the sunshine! A taste of a not-so-distant future.

Now back to work!

The Heartache of Losing Data

Before the break as I was working on my midterm prototype, it happened. There was a glitch. Microsoft excel lost its mind. I went to bed late one night with my data safely saved and resting, or so I thought. But when I reopened the file the next day, the file had reverted back to November 2021. What??!! Oh, this couldn’t be happening.

Have you ever had that moment? Scrambling through your files, searching high and low. A wave of panic and disbelief. “No, this is the correct file. Oh, no.” And then I remembered the night before well after midnight, sleepy and a little foggy, there was a crash with Excel. The file reopened, my data was all there, but Excel kept asking me if I wanted to save, and files with similar file names. I thought those must be older files. I complied and hit yes again and again.

Oh no, what had I done? That’s when it must have happened. My main data file had reverted back several months. And all the recent cleaning, adding, organizing, the reworking of the data that I had done and so much more in recent weeks was lost. The version history in Excel had gone dark in the software, so that was no help. The iCloud backup was no help. And I had not backed up on my external hard drive for at least a couple of weeks (so, so very unlike me).

I surfed the web looking for potential solutions, thought about contacting Apple thinking they might miraculously have a backup from the date and time stamp before the crash (I was pulling at straws). The realization sank in, I couldn’t get it back as it was.

So what do we do when our software strikes a blow?

We lift up that chin, slap on a smile, think positive thoughts, get a plan in motion and charge ahead.

And with that, there was a glimmer of hope. I was at least able to retrieve the spreadsheet from the last external backup. I had lost a few weeks and a lot of changes, hours upon hours of updates. But it was not all lost, though I felt an ache in my heart. Silly? Maybe. But I have worked with this data for the last eight months of my life. It has been a big part of my everyday for nearly a year now. It felt like a loss.

And yet, another glimmer, I had been working with a secondary data file with some key data points with two years of data, 2020 and 2021. So at least I had that and was able to finish my midterm prototype. Phew.

The moral of the story is naps are good (though I’m not much of a napper), enjoy a few moments here and there, take a breath in the midst of chaos and always always always triple back up your files!