"And when he opened the fifth seal, I heard the voice of the fifth living creature say, “Come!” And I looked, and behold, a trojan horse! And its rider’s name was Data Loss, and Hardware Failure followed him…."

There is no sight more terrifying than your computer trying to boot, stalling on an opening screen "the color of television, tuned to a dead channel" ¹; no sound more disheartening than the swan song of silence,  when even the death rattle of your hard drive you have so desperately been ignoring has finally ceased, killing any hope of fulfilling promises to your clients.

Recovery from such a tragic loss can be time-consuming and even unrewarding without a practical backup strategy already in place.  Recovery will require reinstallation of all software and plugins and patches and updates. The resurrection of your data will be almost impossible without the help of very VERY expensive data recovery specialists.

UNLESS you have backups.

We might have a discussion here about personal preferences; Dr. Roach (our publisher) seems to be fond of Memeo’s LifeAgent . I am undeniably a fan of Shirt Pocket’s Super Duper  and have written about it in a previous article.

If you are cheap (which I am), Super Duper will back up your hard drive on demand  and create a bootable backup in the process. For FREE. If you decide to invest $27.95 in the safety of your data (which I did), you are rewarded with smart updates and scheduling plus scripting functions.

Only after I forked over the dough did I realized that I couldn’t live without the regularly scheduled backups I get from Super Duper. Every Sunday night, my computer backs itself up then shuts itself off.

The latest version is compatible with Leopard (which i don’t own), does something special with Time Machine which I don’t understand or care about.
Being able to get back to work is enough for me.
 

¹ from the first sentence of William GIbson’s Neuromancer- 1984. "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel"

During a particular tough practice session, I googled "best way to organize receipts" hoping to run across a magic wand that would paste up, organize, and mutate this scandalous evidence of my lifestyle into tax information.

Wow. I found one.

Shoeboxed.com

They will scan, organize, classify any receipt you shove in the  monthly prepaid envelope. They will upload all that information into your online account. You then download all that information as a Quicken or Excel file. The best part, they will mail all those receipts back to you along with the next monthly prepaid envelope. All for $19.95 a month. ($9.95 for the first month)

If that is not enough, Shoebox  gives you an email address for you to use  for those pesky email receipts you get from online retailers- like those that reside in many many backup folders in and around my hard drive.

I only wish they had thought of this last January. I wouldn’t be watching "The Wire" full of dread and guilt.

I wrote about it in our "How We Did It " page (AKA "The Apparatus"). I don’t think I heaped enough praise on this Revolution. It’s a widget-ready Wordpress-based Ezine Theme that works. No programming involved. Need help? Visit the forum. Need some custom code? Visit the forum. Think it’s over your head? Visit the forum. Not only is this Revolution user-friendly, its users are friendly as well. The forum is very active,  responsive and everyone who started out asking for help has hung around to offer help.

In addition, Mr. Gardner has authored a series of video tutorials for those less-than-internet-savvy folks who want a  professional looking blog.

This Magazine-style website in a .zip file comes ready to launch. Just add content.