The State Of Things in 2020

A couple of months back, the atmosphere above the Atomic World HQ shop/studio became polarized. In turn, the ground around the shop harkened up its fear of abandonment and demanded equal rights come hell or high water. The atmosphere chose both – dumping water at an alarming rate and discharging electricity in a thunderous display of lightening.

As my luck would have it, the power pole right outside the studio took the brunt of this charge. All I saw was a bright white flash from all directions and a noise as loud as anything I’ve ever heard before. And then, nothing… Power was gone and so too was my ability to work.

After about 12 hours of grunt, the power company was able to replant a pole outside the studio and restore power. Afterwards, we discovered everything and anything that wasn’t plugged into a surge protector was toast. TVs, microwaves, radios, lighted mirrors, routers, etc… were all deemed dead one-by-one as their need dictated their use.

Eventually, we figured we had found the end of the line and could stop ordering shit off of Amazon, but then we’d discover something else that had found too much electricity. It was as though Mother Nature was attempting to kill me emotionally and financially in a slow, persistent manner.

The kicker came about a month later when brown water started oozing up the drains in our showers and toilets – a tell tale sign that your shitter’s full. Our wasn’t… It’s just that the pump in our septic was fried and that shitty water had no place else to go but up. Shit.

But that had to be the end of the sanctions against us, right? We thought it was and moved on with our lives. As a family we readied for the holidays and as a business, we started producing a series of workbench videos for The Garage Journal. These videos were edited in 4k and it seemed as though this resolution was torturous for our studio machines. They chugged along though, only gasping for air every now and then, and I didn’t put anymore thought towards it.

Christmas came and went and then we all left for NYC to see the ball drop. It was a bucket list thing for my mom and my kids, so we soldiered through the crowds and made it happen. It was a glorious time only tempered by a fall my mom took on our last day there. She suffered a number of broken ribs, a broken nose, and a bruised lung, but still managed the flight back to Texas without much of a wimper.

So once home, I get my mom taken care of and started to prepare for today – one of the busiest days of my year catching up with merch orders, emails, alliance tags, etc… after the long holiday break. Yesterday morning I go to fire up my machines and… nothing. Despite the seriously exspensive surge protecting equipment that they are equipped with, it appears as though my computers have fallen victim to the lightening strike as well – it just took them longer to succumb to the damage.

Bummed for sure, but not defeated… I got out my laptop and prepared to restore it from the backup system that safe guards my entire digital existence from 1997 until the time my computers gave up the ghost. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, it too was taken out by electricity from the gods.

When your life and legacy is in 1s and 0s, however, you have to prepare for situations like these and thankfully, I have done that. I also keep backups off site. It is, however, going to take days to restore from those backups over fiber. And that process can only start once I have a new production machine up and running. Apple has been great to me throughout this disaster and is even rushing a custom machine at no extra charge. I should have it by Thursday and things around here should be back to normal in a week or less.

I only bring this all up as an excuse. I’m late with merch. I’m late with Alliance tags. And I’m late with emails. I have not, however, declared some kind of digital bankruptcy. I will catch up. I just need a little time.

Happy 2020!