New Year's Resolution for Bloggers: Back Up, Back Up, Back Up!

I can't say it often enough, to myself and to others. Back up your computer...everything precious to you... your photos of your kids, your writing, your work, your e-mail, your calendar. Back it up. Do it in several ways... with one of those programs like Norton or McAfee, and every now and then "by hand" -- go in to your documents and make sure there's a copy or two of the most important ones on a portable hard drive or another computer in your home or at the office or both.

I've had several computer crashes over the past ten years, every day I read about another blogger's computer having a fatal virus or other hard drive crash (last week was LadyJava's turn to lose her beloved Miss Fly) and I had a close call last night that caused me to re-check my backup situation. As I type this I am in the process of backing up 57,034 files (103 GB). It says I have another 12 hours and 18 minutes to go, but I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when it's done.

My close call: it was about 11:00pm, and I was just finishing up my bedtime tour of the blogosphere via EntreCard drops. Rex and my notebook were in bed with me, and I couldn't help but notice that my laptop was getting hotter and hotter and hotter. All of a sudden, it just shut down and would not restart. I was exhausted, so I decided to just go to sleep and hope things looked better in the morning. Thankfully, my notebook started up this morning in a mostly normal manner, but it still feels like it has a fever. Wish me luck, and back up your own stuff while I've got you thinking about it!

Update Tuesday at 9:15am: my "endangered" laptop and the portable hard drive are still chugging away upstairs (7 hours 14 minutes to go), and I've switched over to my old HP that crashed over the summer and was returned to me tabula rasa -- a blank slate. It looks like I will spend my day putting programs on this notebook and restoring files here, in the event that the endangered laptop needs to spend the holidays with the technical support team at HP. I don't think I mentioned the Bad Omen from HP when it occurred... about two weeks ago, I received an unsolicited e-mail from HP letting me know that they were sending me a box to return my broken laptop. Hmmm, at the time I didn't have a broken laptop, but the box has been waiting out in my garage for the other shoe to drop...

...which brings me to the origin of that odd expression. Its source would seem to be the following story: A man comes in late at night to a lodging house, rather the worse for wear. He sits on his bed, drags one shoe off and drops it on the floor. Guiltily remembering everyone around him trying to sleep, he takes the other one off much more carefully and quietly puts in on the floor. He then finishes undressing and gets into bed. Just as he is drifting off to sleep, a shout comes from the man in the room below: “Well, drop the other one then! I can’t sleep, waiting for you to drop the other shoe!”