Too depressing for words

I realize that I haven't posted here in a while. First, it was because I was distracted getting the new house ready and moving and doing very little work that wasn't mental planning, on my tutorials. Once we got settled in, though, I set to work with a vengeance on the next tutorial, on the basics of database searching.

I completed this one on Friday and asked Rob to do a run through of it. He did, taking notes throughout in order to be able to give me comments and suggestions. I went through and made some changes based on those and then saved the project. Since some of the changes were going to necessitate my recording new audio, I then went to save the project onto my laptop (which is where I record all the audio) over the network. Something went wrong, however, and I was informed that the project hadn't been saved up there.

I didn't worry, because I had a saved version on my desktop and the previous version, minus the quiz but with all the audio, had been saved on my laptop. So I put it out of my mind and enjoyed Valentine's Day with my family. It was late Sunday night before I decided I would re-record the audio so I could get it published and posted online.

Only when I went to open it on my desktop, to pop it onto a flash drive to take upstairs to the laptop (I didn't want the same failure in saving it again), it wasn't there. According to my desktop, absolutely no version of this project exists. So I took a deep breathe and ran upstairs, thinking I'd be able to access the older version on my laptop and could just redo the quiz. After all, three weeks worth of work couldn't just disappear forever. Right?

Wrong. Although my laptop acknowledges that the file exists, it refuses to open it. Somehow, the saving had begun, wiping out the previous version, and when it failed it somehow damaged the file so that it can't be opened. I have spent the past two days, huddled with computer support and data retrieval software, trying desperately to find and restore anything of this project. All to no avail. I have come to the devastating conclusion that it's gone and I must try and recreate it. I'm already behind and this hasn't helped. And it depresses me to no end. Because I know that it will not be as good, that I'll forget something from the original.

Just shoot me now.