Barista?

I had my first major dissertation breakdown (i.e. "I'm just gonna quit and get a job at Starbucks") yesterday. It's been a week since my laptop died. In that time:

1) Geek Squad hasn't called yet to tell me if the laptop can be saved
2) the file recovery software I bought won't recover my Endnote files
3) I can't access any of my files because I have somehow locked myself out of my hard drive (my husband Frankensteined it to his desktop)
4) I hate, hate, hate using my husband's desktop, which he built himself and runs every program known to mankind (i.e. it's slow as a Tandy 2000). His desktop also hates me, as it capriciously eats my data, shuts off for no reason, and mangles my files beyond recognition. It's like feeding data into a shredder and hoping that you can put together some of the pieces.
5) My husband is addicted to his computer, and so I have to beg for time at night to work. This annoys me to no end...and I am sure it annoys him as well.

To top everything off, Sunday as I was doing some work on the data analysis, a windstorm hit Cincinnati and knocked out power in half the city--including our apartment. Yup, more data lost to the ravages of the Computer Age, since my husband doesn't have a battery backup on his desktop.

Last evening I broached the subject of purchasing a cheap laptop to get me through my dissertation (newegg.com has some Linux based systems for $350) and we got into a huge discussion about how it's just not financially feasible right now. I understand, but it is still immensely frustrating.

By 8 p.m. last night, I was angry, tired, frustrated, fried, and generally ready to begin filling out applications to become a barista (and I don't even drink coffee). Luckily, Tom (a fellow ABD and friend of long standing) was at home. He talked me off the metaphorical ledge and reassured me that all would be well. He is also a dab hand at computers, and told me to ship him my hard drive so that he can try and recover my files.

I leave tomorrow for New York. In addition to meeting with my committee chair, I have to wrangle some forms for the Office of Graduate Studies, pay a visit to Financial Aid, and figure out how I am going to pay my tuition bill since my Financial Aid won't be coming until December.
Ah, the joys of being unemployed.

Computer woes and Chapter 1

Still no answers on the computer front. The part Nick needs to see if my hard drive can function on his desktop arrived today, so hopefully I will have an answer tonight. If it works, all is well and I can begin the arduous process of outlining my literature review. If the hard drive itself is defunct, all my Endnote (bibliographic software) entries for the past three years have gone away. It is at that point that we pay someone a ridiculous amount of money to use a scanning electron microscope on all the drive's plates to retrieve as much information as possible. Sigh.

On the bright side, my advisor liked Chapter 1 for the most part and is suggesting only cosmetic changes. Unfortunately, the other two committee members are going to be unavailable when I am in New York next week, which means I wasted a lot of money on a hotel that I didn't have to (prepaid Internet rates do have their downside). This whole commuting thing is not for the faint of heart of the weak of pocketbook. I don't understand how NYLONs do it.

So yeah. That's about all that's going on as far as the dissertation goes. I am now focusing on (a) creating preliminary typologies for my data set, (b) praying for the safe return of my hard drive, (c) working on a presentation I have to give at the National Association of Gifted Children annual conference, and (d) figuring out how to reconcile the data I have with the data my proposal assumed I would get. (Lesson number one for the qual. researcher: NEVER expect or anticipate findings. Especially do not allow those assumptions to shape your dissertation proposal).

Disaster!

Computer is dead.

Computer with all dissertation data stored on it is dead.

Computer with all the work I have done over the last three years of my life is dead.

I am crying.

Status Update

I have finished all the transcriptions (yay!). Plus, when I sent them to participants for triangulation, all the feedback I got was positive--the participants found the transcriptions accurate and were excited to be helping me with my project (so they said in their emails). I have spent the past few days reading qual. methods articles and books. Uggh--there is so much I feel I don't know. I am also worried that I am putting off the actual writing of chapter 1, which I was warned about by several postdocs.

I am also worried about the quality of information I am getting from these texts. Two of the texts I just picked up at my local library (city, not university). There were several great articles in each, but one book is copyright 1975 and the other one copyright 1990. So, a tad bit out of date. The other two major books I am reading on the subject were recommended to me by my committee chair. They are more recent, but I find the writing style aesthetically awkward and so am having trouble getting the information with an unbiased frame of mind. I just can't seem to keep from groaning at the style, and I am afraid I will discount very useful information because I can't see past the aesthetics of the prose. It's a problem.

Other than that, I intend to spend the day updating my Endnote program with all the qual. methods stuff. Exciting. no?