Good morning, afternoon, evening, night, whatever fits your time zone or planet.
I was about to tweet, but I tweet too much already, and I couldn't fit it into a 140 character message anyway, so...
Last night I was out, gigging with the "day job" for the first time this year. Soundcheck ok, everything is top notch and sounding brilliant.
In the second set I noticed a noise similar to what you heard when you tried to connect to the internet in the 90's, mixed with the Imperial code heard on planet Hoth. Very far from the lush pad and e-piano sample I expected to hear when I hit the low E on my trusty old Fantom G.
Of course that wasn't clear at that point, it was more panic and looking over at the sound engineer, expecting to see him wee on the mixer and sparks flying.
I use a lot of samples, and it turns out every single one of them were corrupted.
No problem, I do have a backup USB stick in case anything should happen to one of them, so I turned the Fantom off during the break and plugged in the USB, then turned it back on again.
It wouldn't load up.
"Check Ram" or something similar in white letters on a blue screen. Yes, keyboards have BSOD now.
10 minutes to set 3, and I'm supposed to open with a big synth of doom playing the famous riff from 'Jump' by Sir Edwards Van Halensville.
So, run around to find a screwdriver, open the panel, rip the RAM out, looks intact, put it back in, turn it on, AND it did load just in time for me to play the intro.
Worst case scenario (excluding the apocalypse) I would have to load it up without the RAM and no USB, then it would at least load the default settings and get some kind of sound so I could play. None of my massive patches and intricate setups, but some sound to finish the gig.
I did manage to fix it in the end, but it was so close to being a complete disaster. Made my heart beat a lot faster. Fiddling with screwdrivers, memory devices and things I know little about doesn't help a lot to make me keep calm and Monotron.
So that's my story. Now share yours.
