Backup backup backup backup

After a couple of years of waiting for it to happen, it finally happened: my faithful laptop died.

By the grace of God, we had ordered a replacement laptop back in January for just such an occasion. I even got it "pre-set-up" for what I needed, and then tucked it away.

Yesterday my old laptop froze. And I mean froze. Totally dead in the water. I finally turned it off cold (which I hate doing) and re-booted. After that it worked fine. I should have backed it up at that time, but I didn't. My last backup was April 3.

This morning my laptop worked fine, until once again it froze. Again, totally dead in the water. This time I had unavoidable job commitments and couldn't mess around, so I transitioned to my new laptop immediately. We were able to get the old laptop to run long enough for me to back up my materials (writing, photos, etc.), so nothing was lost.

My dear father is one the one who spent many years hammering into my head "Back up back up back up back up." He is right.

Back up your computer. You will be glad you did.

Backup backup backup backup.....

A dear friend had a financial blow over the weekend. Her husband, a finish carpenter, had all his tools stolen from his vehicle. It seems some thieves -- who apparently had been watching for the opportunity -- backed into their driveway around 2:30 a.m., wrenched off the tailgate of the truck, emptied the contents within two minutes, and ran.

It's a shattering loss, financially as well as impacting his livelihood. Additionally, there are psychological ramifications -- besides the sense of violation, he had a certain emotional connection to the tools he had been collecting for over 25 years and which he used to provide for his family.

Anyway, yesterday this friend and I were chatting via instant message and we started speculating what things we would be devastated to lose to thieves or disasters. The first thing that popped into my head: my laptop.

The trouble with a laptop, you see, is all the valuable data that tends to accumulate on it. In my case, it's not just my writing; it's all the photos I take, all the articles I collect, all the links I record...

This is why I'm a huge huge HUGE advocate of backing up computers, something my dad always hammered into my head as critical. He's right, too, since backups have saved my fanny any number of times.

But a year ago I had to migrate to a new laptop, and for a variety of reasons never got around to backing it up. It came with a built-in backup program from Dell which wanted me to back my data up to the Cloud (NOT!!!!!), and knowing that my valuable data were vulnerable always nagged at me.

So, in light of my friend's reminder, yesterday Don installed a backup program to my computer and we did a full-scale backup to an external hard drive.

Then, as extra protection, I also backed up specific files (photos, my writing, etc.) to another external hard drive.

Also -- and I'll thank Granny Miller for this -- I backed up my blog (Granny lost her entire blog a few years ago, a devastating blow).

I can't begin to describe the feeling of security all this backing up data gave me, so I'm passing on the reminder to all you dear readers. Backing up files, photos, etc. is critical in today's high-tech world, where data loss can come from any number of directions.

Please, do it today!

Me expert!

I've had a rough morning.

I woke up late, I didn't get my NaNoWriMo word count in, it's pouring rain, the internet was down, I had a pounding headache, and my computer was glitching. In short, it was one of those mornings.

One by one the issues got resolved. I drank my tea, put aside my NaNoWriMo requirements until later, accepted the rain wasn't going anywhere, took some aspirin, and the internet came back up.

But my computer continued to glitch despite re-starting it and doing a "cc cleaner" (a cleaning program). But then Don came along and waved his magic wand, checked a few settings, cleaned this and scrubbed that, and suddenly my computer was working again like a champ.

I covered him with grateful kisses and told the rest of the household, "I love my hubby! He's such an expert in computers!"

"I'm not an expert," he said. "I'm pretty much a caveman when it comes to understanding computers."

"If you're a caveman, then I'm an amoeba."

He adopted a caveman voice. "Oooh look! Hubby make spark! Hubby an expert!" (Adopting a woman's voice): "Oooh, I love hubby! He make spark! He expert!"

Regardless, I still love my hubby. I still think he's an expert.

And my headache's gone.

Predicting future behavior

Here's a fascinating little news article I picked up last night on Drudge.

It seems a multinational security firm "has secretly developed software capable of tracking people's movements and predicting future behaviour by mining data from social networking websites."

Predicting their behavior. Ooooh, ominous. What's next? Will people be pre-emptively jailed for something they "might" do in the future?

Apparently this software (nicknamed "Riot") is designed to track and analyze data from Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and other social network sites. Unsurprisingly "the technology was shared with US government and industry as part of a joint research and development effort, in 2010, to help build a national security system capable of analysing 'trillions of entities' from cyberspace."

The article notes, "Using Riot it is possible to gain a picture of a person's life - their friends, the places they visit charted on a map - in little more than a few clicks of a button." No secrets in cyber-space.

Yeah, that's a "riot," all right. Needless to say, Google (which powers this blog) is hand-in-glove with this technology.

Quite awhile ago I had a faithful reader who rather abruptly announced she would no longer be commenting because she was withdrawing from ALL internet connectivity. Hmmmm. Maybe she had the right idea.

Welcome back, Granny!

Some comments on my last blog post reminded me -- we all need to join together and welcome back Granny Miller!

Granny Miller's blog, if you recall, disappeared a couple of years ago (July 2010) -- a catastrophic loss for her faithful followers. Apparently it was an error on Granny's part. As she wrote, "At the time I accidently destroyed my website, I was caring for a very ill family member. I was planning to retire GRANNY MILLER at the end of the 2010 anyway. Believe me, the loss of my website in those days was the least of my worries."

Granny said it took her over sixteen months to face up to the data disaster, but from the looks of her new website, she's recovered beautifully.

Welcome back, Granny Miller -- we've missed your warm, cheerful, useful, informational, spiffy-snazzy posts!

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On a related note, Granny's accidental destruction of her blog underscores the need for regular backups of everything computer-related. I do a full-scale backup of my computer's hard drive about once a week (and use a thumb drive to back up any important files on a day-to-day basis), but Granny's experience taught me I need to back up my blog on a regular basis as well.

Blogger changed to a new format a couple months ago (ug!), but I found some instructions for backing up Blogger blogs on this site, Living Prepared.

Here are the directions:

In your Blog's control panel, if you click and open the Settings Tab you will see a Blog Tools section, click on that tab. It will open another window and you will see an option to Import Blog, Export Blog and Delete Blog. Clicking on the ‘Export Blog’ will allow you to save a copy of the entire contents of your Blog to your computer. A drop down window will allow you to pick where you want to save the file. It’s very simple to use this feature.

(Import Blog will allow you to restore your Blog should it become corrupted or lost by simply using your saved back-up copy)

Remember folks, as Granny Miller can testify -- a stitch in time saves nine. Backing up your computer/blog/whatever can save an enormous amount of headache, heartache, and work.

Now excuse me, I'm going to back up my blog. Again.

Backups to backups

I'm a little fanatical on the subject of backing up my computer. I do a full-scale backup every week, and if I'm working on something important I'll back up every night on my thumb drive as well. This habit -- ingrained into me by my engineer father -- has saved my bacon any number of times. One time a few years ago, my computer literally up and died, no hope of recovery. No worries -- my full-scale backup was from the week prior, and my important text had been backed up the night before. My losses were minimal.

So anyway... this morning I followed a reader's link to her blog (Oklahoma Transient) which led me to another blog called Living Prepared. This fellow had kindly taken the time to explain how to back up... a blog!

Honestly, it's something to which I never gave much thought. Blogs are always just... there, aren't they?

Apparently no. He references a lady named Granny Miller who used to keep a nifty blog (I believe I've been there, and it was indeed nifty). But something happened and her blog disappeared. As Living Prepared put it, "Years of priceless information gone forever!"

The thought made me shudder. I love my blog and would hate to lose it. So following the directions outlined on Living Prepared, I backed it up.

For those wanting to back up their own blog, here's the directions, which are quite simple.

First I went into my computer and cleaned out a lot of unnecessary stuff (you know how documents pile up). I emptied my computer's trash. The thousands of photos I took in 2011 were transferred to my external hard drive (something I'd been meaning to do anyway). In short, I made a lot of room on my computer.

Then I went to the "Settings" feature on my blog. At the top are three links: Import Blog, Export Blog, and Delete Blog. I clicked on Export Blog. From that page is a big orange button that says "Download Blog."

I clicked on it and then went out to feed the cows. My blog is huge and it took about half an hour to get it all backed up.

This download feature did not give me the option of where to put my blog, but at least I know what the file was called: blog-04-17-2012. So once the backup was created (42,047 KB in size), I transferred a copy to my external hard drive. So now, as of this morning, I have an exact copy of my blog filed in two separate locations. Whoo-hoo, what a nice feeling of security!

Not to be outdone by this excellent information, Living Prepared gave another nifty suggestion: to create a pdf version of my blog (which could ultimately be printed in book form if I so desired, but I won't bother). Nonetheless I considered this yet another handy backup feature, so I went ahead and did it.

I went to a link called Blogbooker, which is a free service that creates pdf's of three different types of blogs (Wordpress, Blogger, and LiveJournal).

This service can only utilize a backed up version of a blog, so I would have had to back up my blog first regardless. Since my blog is serviced through Blogger, I clicked on that button and saw this screen:

I filled in the required information and pressed "Create your BookBlog."

Well, this process took hours. Well, maybe two hours. My blog is huge, after all, and goes back several years and includes thousands of photos. Having this process take so long was no surprise.

...And then it failed. That is, I got a message saying:

Grunt. Well, as of this post I'm trying it again.

But regarding of whether I can manage to obtain a pdf of my blog or not, the fact remains it's now safely backed up. My sincere thanks to Living Prepared for posting this information.

Virus alert

I just received this virus alert from a friend.  Snopes confirms it as accurate.
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Serious Virus Alert - Urgent

This information arrived this morning, direct from both Microsoft  and Norton... Please send it to everybody you know who has access to the Internet.

You may receive an apparently harmless e-mail titled, *Here you have it*.  If you open the file, a message will appear on your screen saying: 'It is too late now, your life is no longer beautiful....'               

Subsequently you will LOSE EVERYTHING IN YOUR PC, And the person  who originated it will gain access to your Name, e-mail and password.

This is a new virus which started to circulate in September.  On September 9th,  an advisory was noted by the US-CERT (United States  Computer Emergency Readiness Team).
              
AOL has already confirmed the severity, and the anti virus  softwares are not capable of destroying it. The virus has been created by a hacker who calls himself 'life owner'.               

PLEASE SEND A COPY OF THIS E-MAIL TO ALL YOUR FRIENDS, and ask them to PASS IT ON IMMEDIATELY!

*THIS HAS BEEN CONFIRMED BY SNOPES.*       http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/hereyouhave.asp

Back it up!

It's been three months since I got my new laptop and we still haven't transitioned over to it. It's been one thing after another. My external mouse didn't work and I needed to get a different cable. It wouldn't connect to the internet. It wouldn't accept my email program. Blah blah blah.

So I'm still working on my old laptop and just dealing with the 30-second-warning shutdowns and other weird quirks it's still prone to.

But this afternoon...oooh, that scared me. I was copying over some complicated Word files when Word froze up. No biggee, it's done that before, so I shifted over to something else and waited for it to unfreeze.  But then the  computer just...stopped. Turned off cold. I couldn't restart it.

Crap.

This was Sunday afternoon, and for the first time in months I had forgotten to do a full-scale backup Sunday morning before leaving for church. I don't know why. I simply forgot. That meant it had been nearly two weeks since I'd done a full backup. I was in trouble.

Thankfully, after a few minutes of cooling down, my old laptop started up again and I immediately ran a backup. Don worked on the new computer somewhat this afternoon, but he's putting in insane hours on our business and didn't have time to get it figured out. So I'm still on my old laptop.

From now on, I'm doing bi-weekly full backups of my files, and daily backups on the thumb drive.

This is serious stuff, folks. For God's sake, back up your computer.

Odds 'n ends

My new laptop is here! I've managed to do the setup and even play a game or two of solitaire, but when it comes to loading anything onto it, I leave that in the very capable hands of my husband. He'll get to it when he has a moment.



Lydia likes to snuggle with Younger Daughter in the morning...


Figuring out which seeds to plant today...


First up are pinto beans, which I planted next to the potatoes because potatoes and beans are compatible.

I was curious how much of a row one package (two ounces) of beans would plant.


After planting one entire row, I had this many beans left over... enough, it turns out, for half of another row. So two ounces of beans planted 1 1/2 rows. Not bad!


Here's Younger Daughter helping plant pinto beans.


We got four rows of pintos planted. (The strings delineate the 3rd and 4th rows.)


I'm trying an experiment. We eat a fair amount of navy beans, but I couldn't find any seed beans. So - can I plant dried beans I buy at the grocery store? A neighbor suggested sprouting them to see if they're viable, so that's what I'll try. I'm soaking some beans in water in a small jar. If they sprout, I'll plant the sprouts.


Back to the garden, this time to plant peas. Three ounces of peas plant two full rows.


Older Daughter helping to plant peas...


I've been thinking about something. Much of what I'm planting in the garden this year duplicates what we already have stored in decent quantities - corn, beans (several dried as well as green), broccoli, tomatoes, etc. I think what I'll do is funnel most of the harvest into seed, rather than eating it. Some plants can do both - watermelon and cantaloupe can provide fresh fruit as well as all the seeds we could want - for the corn and beans and much of the broccoli, etc., I'll just save for seed. One big concern I have, if the bleep hits the fan, is a shortage of nonhybrid garden seeds. By saving most of what I plant this year for seed, I'm assured of a large supply as well as enough to share.

The strawberries have arrived! The strawberry bed isn't ready to plant yet (no dirt), but I can put some in the strawberry boat.


Bareroot strawberries sure don't look like much, do they?


It's hard to see, but there's 75 strawberry plants in this boat.


A good watering, and I'm done for the evening. Good thing too, as it's cold out!


Younger Daughter has a friend spending the night. They spent the afternoon building a fort out of pallets, an elaborate two-room mansion complete with furnishings.



The day was mostly chilly and windy, with dark scudding clouds...


...but in the late afternoon, the sun broke through for a few minutes before sunset.

My computer is dying

Yes it's true. My trusty and well-used Dell Inspiron 1501 is starting to cough and hiccup and gasp a few more times than I'm comfortable with. It's latest trick is to turn itself off, unexpectedly and without provocation, with a mere 30-second warning... which, if I'm in the middle of writing a column, may not be enough time to save everything and close all the supporting windows (from doing research) before it goes dark.

So it looks like it's time for a new laptop.

I can't complain. I've had this computer for four years. It's missing the "Y" key from where the cat pulled it off last year (when I was lifting him off the keyboard). It's coated with dust and pet fur. The screen is a bit scratched. Yet through it all, it's chugged on, faithfully and mostly without fuss. It's seen me through endless columns and articles, blog entries and solitaire games. It cost me $400 and I really can't argue that I haven't gotten my money's worth.

So I'll be ordering a new Dell tomorrow, specifically a Dell Inspiron 1545. It's cheap and has no fancy bells and whistles (which, let's face it, I have absolutely no need for). I can't beat the price either.


It's annoying to have to break in a new computer and get it to where I need it to be. But as my husband so wisely points out, this computer makes us money. It's how I bring in income writing. It's a tool, and sometimes tools need to be replaced.

And one thing's for sure: it underscores the critical importance of backing up one's computer. The last computer I had died - unexpectedly and completely - and totally without warning. If I hadn't had a full-scale backup from two weeks prior, I would have lost a tremendous amount of data and a whole lotta writing. In short, I would have been devastated. As it was, it turned into merely an annoying glitch because we had the backup that my husband was able to load onto the new computer.

So folks, back up your computers. External hard drives are cheap at Costco and worth their weight in gold if your computer suddenly dies. I do a full-scale backup every week, specifically Sunday mornings before we leave for church. Trust me when I say it will save your fanny.