The Wisdom of a Good Backup
Last week I learned the hard way about the importance of regularly backing up all my files. Our car was vandalized and my purse stolen. In the purse were four flash drives on which all of my recent teaching materials were stored. Why they were in my purse (we were on vacation), why I took the purse along for a game of (free) outdoor tennis, and why I left the bright pink purse in plain sight in the front seat of the car are all very good questions to which I don’t have any good answers.
It was/still is a sickening feeling to realize slowly all of the contents of the purse. Credit cards (which were used quickly to rack up close to $1000 in purchases in two states), driver’s license, checkbook, pictures of my kids, voice recorder with cute things my kids have said over the years (heavy, heavy sadness about this), and of course the flash drives. The past two years I have stored most new or revised files on the flash drives as I can plug them in anywhere and edit the files or present a lecture. The piece about backing up the drives was unfortunately forgotten in the rush of each week. The work ahead of me to recreate these files (the semester starts in less than 2 weeks) gives me a very discouraging feeling. And I’ve no one to blame but myself. Wait, that’s not quite true…..I can (and do) also blame the heartless person/persons who silently broke our car window, reached in and stole my identity and years of work. The trick will be to rise above it and get my life back in order as soon as I can, without becoming paranoid and bitter about it.