Thank God I'm a Packrat!

 
Usually I berate myself for being a packrat.   But today, if I could jump outside of my own skin and hug myself, I would.   A hug of relief. 

My old computer died, and with it went countless pieces of information.  The guy I took it to said the hard drive failed mechanically and he's having a hard time getting it to work long enough to extract information.  Yes, I know I should have fully backed it up to Carbonite....I'm doing that on my new computer.  Thankfully I had backed it up until May 2010 when I got a new computer.  But for one reason or another, it hadn't been backed up since then.  Luckily for me, most of my pictures and documents were on the external hard drive backup.   But when they were backed up they were given random #'s for file names and not the file names I had assigned.  Boo hoo!  A problem, but not insurmountable.

But there is good news!!!!!    I'm not only a packrat of physical stuff, I'm a digital hoarder as well.   As of right now I have 715 emails in my inbox and there are certain people whose emails I never delete, such as my mom and dad and my friend Edyth.  Not because I plan to blackmail them, but because I don't want to lose information.  

Lucky for me I've done this, because I can search Gmail, which is web based, and find all those files I mailed back and forth in preparing to publish Volume 1 of my g-g-grandmother's journal.  It appears I may be able to find all the documents in gmail, because I had emailed them to my dad.  Oh, GMAIL, I love, love, love you!   And I love my packrat self!!!!

Now....go back up your computers and/or sign up for Carbonite.   That's what I'm using for my new computer and I love that it just automatically saves everything quietly as I work. 

3 comments:

Debra Spincic said...

Every night when I say my prayers I also thank God that I am a packrat. But, of course, for different reasons!!

Shew. . . . hope that your email works for you. Wouldn't that be great?

JDConwell said...

The image of you jumping outside yourself to hug yourself made me smile.

The hubs is our digital guardian angel around here...ever since back in '96 when I lost my almost-completed thesis and had to retype and rewrite a good deal of it. Now he has us subscribed to Carbonite.

Glad you could save your g-g-grandmother's journal work!

Dixie Redmond said...

I found all the documents! Yay! :-)


"Do not let what you cannot do
keep you from doing what you can do."

John Wooden