… always have a back-up.

I followed my standard summer routine this morning… woke up, flipped open the computer, checked the morning email and then went downstairs to feed Theo, make coffee, etc… I came back upstairs to the office and tried to use the computer when it froze up. O.k. — not a big deal — happens… Restart the thing.

That’s when I first heard the grinding noise.

Yes… grinding. That’s never good.

So… a few disk util attempts later, I take it off to the local Mac hardware specialists. I figured that it’d cost a few hundred dollars for the disk repair… not want I wanted, but o.k. I was kicking myself that I skipped backups lately… there was even a night where I had plugged the laptop into the external before a trip, but I didn’t like how the laptop was sitting precariously on the desk (it’s messy), so I decided to do it later. O.k. — that’s a several hundred dollar mistake. Ow.

So I go run other errands (amazing how much there is to do when your computer is broken!) and then I get THE CALL.

They can’t recover any data. If I want my hard drive back, I can send it off to DriveSavers and for $3500, they’ll get everything off of it.

Ow.

Now I really wish I had backed up more recently.

So… if you’ve emailed me at practicaltheory.org (thank GAWD scienceleadership is an IMAP server) lately, and you were expecting a reply… send it again.

And please everyone… get a backup hard drive… and use it.

My old boss taught me a long time ago, "If you are going to teach with technology, always have a backup plan."

Whoops.