Photo by Truth Went Trendy

As you muddle through yet another boring task on the word processor, the computer’s sluggishness becomes annoying. In a huff, you bang open the Task Manager to see what is hogging all of the CPU’s cycles. Hmmph! It’s that updated version of Whiz-bang 2000. This is unacceptable!

Something like this happened to me early this morning. I was working on a blog post, converting it from a previous incarnation on the web. That meant slogging through HTML tags, updating hyperlinks and cleaning up the layout. I was tired. I was bored. This deadly combination resulted in a minor catastrophe. As I was cutting and pasting text, I noticed an increasing delay between pressing Ctrl-X (cut) and the completion of the operation by Microsoft Word. This had never happened before.

I opened the Task Manager and discovered that PhraseExpress was churning through CPU cycles like crazy. As proverbial straws go, this was the ultimate hump smasher. It was bad enough that PhraseExpress 7.0 weighed in at twice the size of its predecessor; I also had to deal with a more aggressive pop-up dialog, accusing me of using the program for commercial purposes and nagging me to purchase a license. (It’s free for non-commercial use.) Now, this mysterious cycle-stealing behavior was just too much. I decided to go back to version 6.

The only problem was, I couldn’t shut down the program! Whatever 7.0 was doing, it didn’t include responding to right-clicking on the system tray. So, I did what any savvy Task Manager user would do: I killed the process.

Oops.

That’s “oops” as in hindsight is twenty-twenty vision. At the time that I terminated the program, I was unaware that I had wiped out the primary phrase database. I merely proceeded to rename the folder and bring in a backup of the folder containing version 6. I was also not thinking about the fact that the version 7 database would be unreadable by version 6. Heh-heh. I found out quickly enough when I restarted the program and tried to use an autotext shortcut.

Nothing Happened.

Photo by One Laptop per Child

I can think of few times when stark, paralyzing numbness beset me at a computer keyboard. Visions of a dozen shortcuts lost made my right eyelid twitch. The thought of rebuilding the database sent a chill of despair down my spine. I began the torturous hunt for a backup database file.

There was no shortage of backups. However, to add to the drama, I grabbed the one from version 7. Needless to say, it presented a blank slate when I restarted the program. Finally, I reached back twelve days and grabbed the last backup that I had made before upgrading. Thankfully, it was the one I needed.

The whole sordid episode consumed about ninety minutes of time. That hour and a half pales in comparison to the mental anguish I endured. If you think I’m writing in jest, take a look at this:

Over 4,900 phrases! While I certainly added less than 10% of that myself, that’s still nearly 500 phrases that I would have lost. Many of these shortcuts are second nature to me. I constantly use PhraseExpress to bang out code snippets, sign blog comments and provide really long hyperlinks. This ninety-minute nightmare made me realize that it is my Single Most Important Piece of Software.