When my computer crashed, I borrowed one. Those of my fellow web-addicts will still be cringing and crying out, "It's not the same!" And that's true. My own computer has all my files, plus an extensive collection of bookmarks on my Personal Toolbar, not to mention the mail application I'm used to.
So what am I doing writing a Blogger post? I'm writing to describe the backups I have, and the ones I will create when I get my computer back next week.
I write this blog for two kinds of readers, who may, in fact overlap. I write it for people learning how to use the web as part of their own personal learning, whether informal or education or job related. Second, I write this for teachers and students who want to use aspects of the web in their classrooms or for homework uses. (You can see the overlap!) So now the good news about what I am still able to (easily) do even on a borrowed computer.
- I can write this post. I searched for my blog title using Google and found it at the top of the list. I knew my user name and password, so I could log in and write. The same is true for my other blogs. They are easy to find, and all I need is Google and my registration info. Which brings me to some bad news about where I store my registrations, which I'll get to later.
The phone just rang and I heard bad news from the computer repair guys. My hard drive is toast. Perhaps some of the data can be recovered, but I'll need a new drive or a new machine. ARGHH!!!!!!!
I love my Mac iBook. It was the first laptop I owned, and the fifth computer, and second platform, I wrote my thesis on. It was loaded with all kinds of nice programs, and I used many of them. It was beautiful in appearance and operation! I don't want to believe it's dead, but the repair guys have been helpful and money-saving before, so I trust them. Arghh;-(
Back to the good news and I'll get to the other bad news later.
- I've put a lot of my work on the web. So most of my (important) pictures are on Flickr, and a few of my word files are on Box (but not enough - I've been negligent about back-up. That's the real bad news! I've been careless about backup and may have lost everything I haven't backed up, and that's a lot!) Sorry - back to the good news.
- All my blogs are safely up on the web.
- My wikis are safe on the web.
- My big bookmark collection, in del.icio.us, is safe on the web.
- My RSS collection is safe on the web, in Bloglines, - though I've been reading a lot of good things about Google Reader and thinking of transferring.
- I can get to my two conventional email accounts by using webmail, which I find visually unattractive and operationally limited and slow, but hey! I can get my mail, and my Gmail, already on the web, is safely there.
- And my most recent good move, which I thought I'd wasted time on and now find a lifesaver - I set up my own Google Account with my own personalized Google Homepage and filled it with widgets and links.
My bad news is I have to get a new hard drive or laptop and I may have lost extensive data because I didn't back up.
My (unsolicited) advice: Backup, backup and backup! And put as much as you can up on the web for easy retrieval.
1 comment:
Thanks for the nice post! Mac ROCKS!!
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