Lesson Learned
I was so excited to get moving on a project for one of my clients. The time away from constant work had been good and made me realize again how much I love designing, learning, and creating, so I was eager to get back to work full-speed, all of my tools laid out before me.
I leafed through all of my papers: smooth vellum, textured linen, crisp whites and a plethora of colors, patterns, and moods. I rummaged through containers of embellishments, attachements, glitter, buttons, etc. like a rich man diving into a pool of money. I refreshed myself on the feeling of ribbons: satiny smooth that feels like silk against your skin; the slightly bumpy ridges of grosgrain; all in slender 1/8-inch to plump 2-inch widths. Ah, heaven for the paper crafter.
Feeling re-energized, I turned on the ol' Mac and set to getting ready for the busy week ahead. I'm still new at the Mac, but am falling fast for it. All I needed to do was a little housekeeping, tidying things up and putting everything in the best place for it. Create a few aliases on the desktop for quick and speedy access and voila! Off and running!
Somehow though, in the midst of my housekeeping, I deleted something kinda important: ALL of the files in "My Documents", including a treasury of recipes, the birthday/address list of all of my friends, and, oh yes, all of my business files.
Tears streaming and my thoughts/words coming out like blubber, my loving hubby pointed me in the direction of the nearest Mac store Genius Bar and I headed out, pleading with the "powers that be" the entire time, but somehow still in a state of disbelief and denial. Surely I could not have deleted ALL of my files permanently, right? Well, according to Mr. Mac Genius, the answer was decidedly grim. I bought an external storage solution and opened up the downloaded program which would answer the question repeating over and over in my mind. Some 40 minutes later, my fate was revealed: nothing listed looked at all familiar. My files were (and are) gone.
Today is a new day. Lesson learned yesterday. The same one I learned constantly growing up with two parents incredibly in-tune with technology. (We were the first people I knew to have internet! Back then called Bulletin Board System and very text-heavy.) I knew to back everything up. I know that these things happen, having experienced this same, painful lesson more than once before. But I admit to growing a bit lax in the past few years, thinking that technology has been improving vastly, so surely I and my computer would be safe. Well, the technology may be improved, but the users are still the same humans who make mistakes, tossing items meant to be kept, pressing the wrong button at critical moments, and thinking we know more than we actually do.
Thankfully I've only had my Mac for a few months and have been making the transition slowly, so I still have quite a few of my files on the PC in my office as well as hard copies of quite a few things. Hubby remains the optimist, whispering into my hair during a much needed hug that this next time I'll create something even better than the originals. Lesson learned: always marry a man who knows when to hug.
I leafed through all of my papers: smooth vellum, textured linen, crisp whites and a plethora of colors, patterns, and moods. I rummaged through containers of embellishments, attachements, glitter, buttons, etc. like a rich man diving into a pool of money. I refreshed myself on the feeling of ribbons: satiny smooth that feels like silk against your skin; the slightly bumpy ridges of grosgrain; all in slender 1/8-inch to plump 2-inch widths. Ah, heaven for the paper crafter.
Feeling re-energized, I turned on the ol' Mac and set to getting ready for the busy week ahead. I'm still new at the Mac, but am falling fast for it. All I needed to do was a little housekeeping, tidying things up and putting everything in the best place for it. Create a few aliases on the desktop for quick and speedy access and voila! Off and running!
Somehow though, in the midst of my housekeeping, I deleted something kinda important: ALL of the files in "My Documents", including a treasury of recipes, the birthday/address list of all of my friends, and, oh yes, all of my business files.
Tears streaming and my thoughts/words coming out like blubber, my loving hubby pointed me in the direction of the nearest Mac store Genius Bar and I headed out, pleading with the "powers that be" the entire time, but somehow still in a state of disbelief and denial. Surely I could not have deleted ALL of my files permanently, right? Well, according to Mr. Mac Genius, the answer was decidedly grim. I bought an external storage solution and opened up the downloaded program which would answer the question repeating over and over in my mind. Some 40 minutes later, my fate was revealed: nothing listed looked at all familiar. My files were (and are) gone.
Today is a new day. Lesson learned yesterday. The same one I learned constantly growing up with two parents incredibly in-tune with technology. (We were the first people I knew to have internet! Back then called Bulletin Board System and very text-heavy.) I knew to back everything up. I know that these things happen, having experienced this same, painful lesson more than once before. But I admit to growing a bit lax in the past few years, thinking that technology has been improving vastly, so surely I and my computer would be safe. Well, the technology may be improved, but the users are still the same humans who make mistakes, tossing items meant to be kept, pressing the wrong button at critical moments, and thinking we know more than we actually do.
Thankfully I've only had my Mac for a few months and have been making the transition slowly, so I still have quite a few of my files on the PC in my office as well as hard copies of quite a few things. Hubby remains the optimist, whispering into my hair during a much needed hug that this next time I'll create something even better than the originals. Lesson learned: always marry a man who knows when to hug.
posted by Kathy at 10:29 AM
1 Comments:
I SO feel your pain on this. I dumped all of my email files a couple of months ago, and found out the same bad news that you did.
I've since learned of (and installed) a Mac program called "Retrospect" that does automatic back ups for me. It's pretty good, although in retrospect, I wish I'd had it before I lost all my data. ;o)
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