Making Lemonade by Andy Scheer

This past weekend I bought a netbook computer at a garage sale.

The machine was just a few years old, the price was great, and they said they’d take a lower offer. I gave it a test, and it seemed to work fine. They said it had hardly been used. After I got home, I discovered why. But only after I’d invested multiple hours.

I spent much of Saturday sorting it out: removing factory-installed bloatware, replacing the internet access program, and adding Open Office and a few other free programs. I added my data files and favorite desktop photos and adjusted program settings just the way I liked.

I figured I’d spent a little money and a few hours for a nice, compact, backup machine.

I was wrong. Turns out this make and model has a glitch. Like a fainting goat, it’s given to freezing at random moments, with no solution but to push the power switch and start over. Even the promised solution of updating the BIOS files didn’t help.

Did I gain anything from the experience? Probably. Every now and then I need a reminder that a deal that looks too good to be true is likely just that.

It didn’t hurt to get a refresher on how to set up some key programs.

Best, I learned the data files I keep in my pocket on a flash drive are indeed sufficient if my real computer crashes.

Plus, I got something to write about here.

Are Your Backups Working? by Andy Scheer

This past week I've been straightening my office. Not just around my desk, but also where I keep most of my work: my computers.

I've deleted unwanted programs, sorted files into project folders, and – most important – backed up key documents onto high-capacity flash drives and an external hard drive. I thought I was covered.

This week I've also made big changes to my website. Many hours worth. I'd hate to lose them. So I opened the administrator's toolbar, selected “online backup,” and clicked all the settings to ensure daily backups.

Or so I thought.

This morning, having made another big update, I visited the “online backup” section again. Just in case.

Good thing I did. For multiple consecutive days, the automatic backups I've been counting on had failed.

Fortunately, I discovered the problem before a crash – and made some backups manually.

If you've been in the writing business awhile, you know the horror stories of people who've lost key documents. Now they tell others to install a system for automatic backups.

Good idea. Just check if those backups work.

Ideas Lost and Found by Andy Scheer

This morning I spent a half-hour searching the house for a scrap of paper. I had plenty more like it—discarded sheets from a page-a-day calendar. What made this paper valuable was what I'd scribbled on the back.

Most Saturday nights I scratch my head about what topic I'll address in my next blog. Then it happens. An idea springs to mind. I grab a sheet from my stack of Dilbert calendar pages and jot that idea—and the supporting elements that follow the inspiration.

With the ideas captured, I can go to sleep, secure in the knowledge I have a point of entry to a topic. I know from experience that over the next two days, more elements will fall into place and I'll be ready to sit at the keyboard Monday morning.

But everything hinges on that 4½ x 5½ scrap of paper. This morning it went missing. I looked everywhere—twice. Nothing.

I remembered the basics of what I wanted to write. But some key observations had vanished. Should I still pursue the topic—knowing it would never be quite what I had envisioned? Or, because I wasn't writing to an assigned topic, should I simply shift gears?

This morning I got a third option. I found the paper—in plain sight on my desk. But the incident gave me a new topic: what do you do when a key piece of work disappears?

I know all about backing up computer files. But a colleague recently had his computer crash—and multiple conversations with tech experts revealed the online backup system hadn't been set up correctly. This past weekend my 8GB flash drive failed; all the backup files on it disappeared. I've enjoyed times of amazing writing productivity—followed by some glitch that trashed the last five, ten, or fifteen minutes of inspiration.

No matter how good you think your backup systems, eventually some treasure will vanish from beneath your fingertips. When that happens, how do you move forward?