It won’t ever happen to me!  Right?  But of course!  It won’t happen to me.  But it did.
The electric company installed a new pole and transformer in my neighborhood.  When the lines to my house were connected, a mistake was made.  Consequently, over 200 volts went down a 110 line and all the electronics in the path were fried…

Unfortunately this happened to be 2/3 of the electronics in the house, including 3 televisions, 3 sound systems, telephones, and of course my computer system and printer.  Supposedly I will be compensated for the loss, but that doesn’t take into account the time spent recreating everything which wasn’t backed up.

Everyone will be happy to know that the surge protectors responded, but only after the items connected to them were killed.  Now I have a huge and expensive, super sized surge protector for the computer and printer.  It is so macho that I almost feel like saying “OK, hit me again.”  But only almost.

The first thing I did when re-creating my office was try to identify which files were backed-up.  Many were and some weren’t.  That’s a fib.  Many weren’t.  Being a traditionalist, I do have hard copy of the majority of the information though. (Did you catch that word “traditionalist?”. It sounds much better than “old fashioned.”)  This incident has given me a chance to do Spring Cleaning on my files.  As with any adventure in throwing things away though, we discover every now and then that we want something back.

Collecting personal pictures was the easiest task. I simply asked my friends to send me the pictures of my cats that I had sent to them!  Others I found in my Sent files on my Yahoo email account.  Some of you will find this tip handy.  Last year, right before hurricane Rita, I sent images of the outside and the contents of the house, as well as pictures of friends and pets, to my Yahoo account for offsite storage.  Now I have pictures for insurance purposes which will be available year-round, unless some catastrophe affects Yahoo’s servers. 

The first thing I missed when exploring the Internet on my new computer were the automatically stored passwords.  Some I had written down, but of course, not all.  This still haunts me as I return to sites I seldom use.  Along with the passwords, I miss my collection of  Favorites.  My collection was wonderfully organized and very extensive. 

I also discovered that my collection of names, addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses was last backed-up several months ago.  So, if you haven’t heard from me recently, do send me a note so that I can have your email address again!

Now, I am very meticulous about backing-up everything.  At least, as I have more and more time and energy invested in my business, I have learned this lesson early.  My parting remark is “Don’t assume it won’t happen to you!”

by Kathryn C. Kelly
“Excellence costs.  But in the long run, mediocrity costs far more.”