So for the last week or so I have been manically trying not to lose Really Important Stuff like documents, passports, files etc as I have just moved from Canada to NYC and have made a brief stop in PR to visit my mom. Well the last thing I expected to lose—my laptop—is of course what is gone, vanished, entirely. There is a small chance that the TSA at the Newark airport has it but I won’t find out till Monday as their lost and found unit is closed during the weeked. I never thought that I would so want the TSA to help me out, although they, and the whole crazy security protocols, are part of the reason my laptop is gone.
I made a backup of my computer right before leaving Canada, but I did it pretty quickly and did not check if it was really ok. All the really really important stuff is also backed up in email, or printed on paper, so Total F*cking Disaster is not imminent, just Total Disaster. So I won’t find out if I have my computer contents until Wed evening when I return to NYC. Since there is not much I can do here, I will cross my fingers and hope for the best.
When I got home to PR, at 3:30 am to find no computer, I was pretty devastated. But instead of brooding over it, I switched into emergency mode, spending the next hour changing all sorts of passwords at 4 am, stealing the wireless from the hotel that is next door to my mom’s apartment (thankfully my SO was with me, donning a laptop). Although I did not store any on my computer, I did have my userid information in various places and I am pretty sure my computer was not off but only on sleep mode.. Yuck.
After waking up after a few hours of sleep, I was pretty shocked that a good portion of my life is potentially gone, but then again, my mother’s alzheimers shocked me in other ways. Not too much has changed, though her memory loss, not surprisingly, is worse. In some ways, the fact that her data loss is permanent, that you can’t make a back up of the memories that are gone, that the data loss is so much more important than what you can have on a computer, has put things in some perspective, although I wish I only had the computer data loss to deal with instead.
Boy and girl, that sucks.
(But on the up side, woohoo, you’re here!)
I’ve seen your mother and sister rather frequently on weekends, which always brightens my day. Last there was a bit of an incident, but that’s how the dice rolls in these kinds of situations. I’m looking forward to seeing them again.
And of course, I hope to see you while you’re here, if at all possible! Sadly, however, there can be no loudly calling each other “doctor” in a trendy Old San Juan café at this time, for I have not yet caught up to the cool (newly-minted) kids.
PS: Check out the brand-new blog address!
Comment by (Julio) — July 21, 2007 @ 7:29 pm
I just have backuppc prod my machine every few days (I think I’ve got it set to nightly still, but 3 days suffices too) with an rsync process over ssh. Its generally quite fast (under 20 minutes for my 20G homedir for instance, but i have a faster cpu in my backup server) and is hands free, it just kicks off when it notices my laptop is back on the home network.
Comment by Scott Dier — July 21, 2007 @ 9:22 pm
Will cross my fingers that said laptop is in a ‘safe, undisclosed location’ and will be returned to you safe and sound
Although you did some kind of backup which is ‘a good thing’ nonetheless, so hopefully 80% of what was there is ok. Glad you got to see your mom. May you can just recall thing into a tape recorder and then get the neighborhood where she lives to add some of theirs. Memory is decentralized, sortof. Each sliver adds up. Rashamon, or some such.
Comment by Kevin Mark — July 22, 2007 @ 10:11 pm
Damn B, that stinks. Also saddened to hear about your mother.
other than that, hope you are quite well. me and the ‘sposa are now (back) in Philly. Let me know if yer down in this neck of the woods, and I’ll do the same. My phone number, if by chance you still have it, is still my old 415 listing.
cheers,
looby
Comment by Dave Looby — July 24, 2007 @ 11:03 am