Explanation Time! Blaaah!

Blaaargh! Ok I'm two days behind on the Flip/Flop February challenge island here's why: yesterday, my iPod Touch had a spaz attack. I lost pretty much everything, and I had a breakdown LOL.

I've talked about this before, but for those of you who don't know, my iPod is basically my computer. I use the family computer when I have to (I live with my family still) but its about a thousand years old and slow as a snail. LOL. It's pretty frustrating to use, so everything that I do online, I do on my iPod. All my photos, videos, files, data, everything is on my iPod. I will of course back up my super important files and put them either in my DropBox or transfer them onto my external USB, but I only do that once every few months, or just basically whenever I need to (like when I clean it out to make extra room, etc.)

I've had my iPod for a little over two years now, and as Apple product owners know, there are system updates on regular intervals, and it's highly recommended that you back up all of your files before you install them., just in case anything would happen. I always did that, every single update for the past two years. I never had any problems or anything happen, not even once. But still, I figured better safe than sorry and continued to do it every time. Except this time.
The ONE and ONLY time that I didn't do it, it happens. Just my luck.

It was late at night, I had had the newest system update sitting in my settings for two days because I hadn't gotten around to installing it yet. I looked at it, saw that it was only 73mb. and figured, oh I'll just set it up and have it install overnight while I sleep so it'll be ready in the morning. It's small, I won't have to back-up EVERYTHING for one tiny update, I told myself. Nothing will happen, it never does, I told myself.

WHY DID I LISTEN TO MYSELF. I clicked the button, agreed to the terms and conditions, and it started to verify the update. Then it happened. The screen went black, and up popped the screen iPod/iPhone owners never want to see, the recovery mode screen. I tried everything I could possibly think of, but it wouldn't turn back on. Even though it was after 3am and I was exhausted, I went up and plugged it into iTunes. iTunes told me I had to restore the iPod to factory settings. Which, of course, wipes the iPod clean. Ugh.
I unplugged it and decided to go to bed and hope that a miracle would happen overnight and it would turn back on, or maybe it would all just be a bad dream LOL. But I was pretty much in denial because at that point I pretty much knew I had to just kiss all my files goodbye.

The next day I tried everything again, and nothing. I googled how to get iPods out of recovery modes, watched tutorials of YouTube, none of them worked for me. Of course, the biggest one that seems like it works for people, involves using the home button. My home button has been broken for a year, I use the assistive touch (where the little drag-and-drop button come up on screen and functions as your home button.)
I connected to Apple Tech support, and the guy told me I had pretty much no choice but to restore. Although I have to say, the tech support guy I got connected to was actually very friendly and helpful for once. I don't have a very good history with Apple tech support, I always seem to get either a rude grumpy person, or someone who doesn't speak English very well and we end up with a huge language barrier and they can't understand me when I try to explain my problem LOL. So that was refreshing.

Anyhow, the tech support guy walked me me though the restore, and gave me links to some articles showing me how to restore my backed up files through iCloud.

That brought me to my new problem. I hadn't backed up using iCloud in over a year. Like I said, when I backed up my pictures and files I always put the on my USB Drive or into my DropBox.

So long story short, I lost everything, all the way up to over a year ago. I am happy that I got some of my stuff back at least and didn't have to be completely wiped clean, but I still lost ALOT. Including all the pictures for this challenge, and my whole night the night before painting for two hours so that I would be a few days ahead.

Luckily, all of my super important files were already backed up on my Dropbox etc., but I hadn't backed the rest of my stuff in about two months. Two months worth of files, pictures, videos, save data, goooone.

My lesson is learned, and I'm telling you, please learn from my mistake, BACK UP YOUR FILES. All the time, on a regular basis. And before ANY update no matter how small it is or how many you've done without an issue. It CAN happen.

I never wanted to have to restore, I've even gotten the infamous "white screen of DEATH" (yeah that was real comforting to hear when I googled the problem LOL) before, and even then I was able to get it back without restoring. But the one and only time that I decide not to back up, it happens. Thanks, universe. :P LOL.

So, that's why I'm behind. But, I had some extra time today and I did my manis (all over again that I already did aaaaagghhh) and will be caught up tomorrow.

So I'm sorry everyone, and I'm sorry that this was so long and a little rant-y.
This was a frustrating past two days.

OH and side-note, let us have a moment of silence for LavaLand, my world in minecraft pocket-edition that was the best world I've ever built that had (among other things) an intricate mine that spread under the entire world that took me all of last summer to build. No, losing that wasn't as bad as losing my files and stuff, but it still hurt LMAO. LavaLand 2.0 is underway. xD