A note to my loyal reader
Or, more optimistically, readers. Last weekend the hard drive in my 7-year-old G4 PowerMac decided to melt down. Naturally the last time I backed up was a year ago. You know: about two months before I started working on my fucking book. TekServe is working on data reco, so I'm crossing my fingers and living in the moment. While they do whatever they can, which will take at least a till Wednesday, I'm putting in extra hours at The Week. I have access to a computer here, but can't do a lot of blogging. After that I'll have to spend some time setting up my new iMac and possibly, I suppose, reconstructing everything that I lost. The upshot is that I'm on a forced hiatus until further notice. Keep my hard drive in your prayers, unless you're one of my many readers who prays to Satan.
Comments
It's okay, I can hold out for a while. Um, and I'm sure the rest of us can, too. (Right, fellas?)
Aside: Have you read "American Gospel: God the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation," by Jon Meacham? It seems like it would be somewhat relevant to your book.
Posted by: Michael | October 6, 2006 10:32 AM
Horse left the barn, Wonder Boys reference, you're a damn writer -- how'd this happend, blah blah blah.
Even if this doesn't lead you to buying six external drives for backup, don't forget there are many hack methods available (since you have at least the fortune of relatively small files). Take your current draft, Stuffit and mail it to yourself on a gmail/yahoo acct. Get a www.strongspace.com acct ($8/month). Stuffit with a password and stick it in a directory on your web hosting acct. Mail a CD to your parents. And tell all your friends: a seven year old hard drive is failure waiting to happen. One of them is probably deluding themselves that Mac hard drives are covered in pixie dust and somehow exempt. Good luck.
Posted by: 99 | October 6, 2006 11:02 AM
I know, I know. Don't worry too much, though. I hadn't actually started writing the book yet. I like to think that if I had, I would have backed it up. But I did (potentially) lose a shitload of research and organization. But like I said, I'm not thinking about it until I hear from TekServe.
Posted by: radosh | October 6, 2006 11:06 AM
oy, i'm sorry. i feel puky just THINKING about it. hope everything's recoverable.
Posted by: marjorie | October 6, 2006 11:08 AM
Oh my stars. That's just terrible. My boyfriend just recently had his entire Gmail account "disappeared", knocking out 2 years of his correspondences, password emails, papers, etc. Nothing compared to your (hopefully temporary) loss. It's got me on this kick of backing the SHIT out of everything I have, locally, as well as online. Even hard copies. I'm liking Box.net a lot for web 2.0 remote backups. But this is all after-the-fact commenting. I'm so sorry! My atheistic fingers are vigorously crossed, and I'm even sending "thoughts" and "good vibes" your way.
Posted by: Abby | October 6, 2006 11:16 AM
But I did (potentially) lose a shitload of research and organization.
Just switch publishers, and have Regnery put it out. No research required!
Seriously, good luck. I had a similar, but not quite as personally catastrophic, wish-I'd-backed-it-all-up loss happen with most of the score to that musical I told you about. But it all worked out (relatively) OK in the end.
Posted by: Vance | October 6, 2006 11:26 AM
Good luck. We'll be fine. I can always, gulp, do my job.
Posted by: TG Gibbon | October 6, 2006 3:40 PM