Practical alternatives to the panic position

What to do when the screen goes blank? Here is some advice or practical alternatives to the panic position. Hint: You won't find these in the manual.;)

From the article, "Nearly everyone knows that horrible, sinking realization that something's gone wrong. The file you saved isn't there, or at least it isn't where you thought it was. The machine just rebooted and there's a little dialog box saying that the disk isn't recognized, would you like to initialize it? Most of you know what happens next: you do the one thing that guarantees that the data stays lost. You do something hasty, something stupid. In short, you panic.

Panic is a reliable destroyer -- whether it's laying waste to data or to other things. Panicky people make bad decisions, frequently ignoring information that's right in front of them. Time and time again, panic turns a bad situation, or even a mild inconvenience, into a real catastrophe.

In this month's column, Peter Seebach suggest practical ideas so you can deal with your own computer-borne panic reactions, as well as tricks that software developers can use to help users work through the occasional, inevitable panic attack."