Out At Work

Last Thursday, the Wheaton Alliance (originally Gay-Straight; now, depending on who you ask, LGBT, LGBTQ, LGBTA, or LGBTTSQQIAA – a gold star to anyone who can identify all the letters without Google) pulled together a couple of alumni to join us at our meeting. The alumns are pretty much just like us, except older. Well, there’s also the fact that (depending on how far back you go) some of them had to hold their Alliance meetings at secret times in locked rooms. But that’s a story for another post.

This is about another difference. A major difference. A distinction that, within just a few years, will be of paramount importance to all of us.

These people are employed.

So here’s what I learned about how to be queer in the workplace.

I can see the sun again

Wheaton’s tech support can reach the files on one of my partitions (of two that I would have wanted: the one containing the Windows system and program files, and a generic one). They’re being copied to a more stable drive as we speak, and when the new computer arrives they will be delivered safely back into my hands.

What’s safe, previously thought lost:

Music that I’ve gotten in the past couple of weeks.

Several short homework papers.

A recently compiled collection of Chii pictures.

A 7 GB torrent with the download 99.8% finished.

The next four Shine comics!

What’s lost, for good:

An uncertain number of pictures of Jon Stewart (automatically dumped into My Pictures, and never sorted).

A few folders’ worth of family photos (ditto).

Most of my Paint Shop Pro textures.

All my bookmarks!

In short: things are worse than they could be, but better than they were; and I’m never going to leave any files out of my backups again, no matter where Windows wants to put them.