This past June a designer I know, Rae Creedle, lost her home to fire. Worse than that, she lost the all the parts of her knitting business that were ON the now-melted computer.
It was a devastating loss, but Rae was kind enough to use it as an opportunity to teach all of us about the importance of backup. Oddly enough, and not like me at all, I heeded her message and signed up for Mozy as a computer backup.
I also store old files from past projects on a hard drive, files that I may never need to refer to again, but I need to keep them for legal reasons. If you’ve ever emailed me with a question about an old design or an old book, this may be why it takes me some time to find an answer…
Since I don’t keep these files on my computer, they wouldn’t be backed up in case something should happen to our hard drive. I keep them on one of my servers (anniemodesitt.com, flipknit.com, modeknit.com, knitwithcourage.com, etc.) because I have a LOT of room that I don’t use for my websites.
Imagine how thrilled I was to remember this happy backup routine when my computer went dead yesterday. In the midsts of my angst, it was a bright spot. That, and my new cheap-o refurb ipod-touch which allows me to continue to get email and check websites when my computer is out of commission…
I had noticed for some time that the battery seemed to be doing odd things like not working. The computer needed to be plugged in to work, if the cord came out the computer would just “click” off. SO annoying.
But I’d done nothing about it (well, nothing except the backup thing…) Last night the cord fell out again, but this time there was no lovely “chime” when I tried to turn it on. Just 3 long, forlorn beeps. I joked on Twitter last night that I asked the resident Jew to perform a “Lazarus” on my poor laptop…
And my dear, dear Gerry, our resident tech-head, was able to get the computer running again this morning. Yay, Gerry! Apparently there’s a well known problem with some of their batteries, one of which is in my own Mac. So a new one is on its way, and with any luck it will be here by the time I leave for TNNA!
BTW, in case any of you were wondering? I’m Times New Roman.