A Paragon of Efficiency
June 15th, 20111. Sit down at laptop, ready to work.
2. Realize mouse is still upstairs. Go get it.
3. While upstairs, check email on desktop; process some photos; look for a file; realize file is on laptop.
4. Go downstairs to get file from laptop.
5. Realize mouse is still upstairs. Go get it.
Posted on: Wednesday, June 15th, 2011 at 2:50 pm
Categories: Meanderings.
Tags: efficiency, humor, organization, writing
June 16th, 2011 at 9:49 am
I hope that part of the routine entails copying all the important “stuff” _between_ the two machines, that or backing up to external storage, perhaps an external USB hard drive, perhaps even cloud storage.
The last thing I’d want is for a wonderful story to get lost when its only medium stops going round & round & ….
June 16th, 2011 at 12:40 pm
External storage! Fiction, at least, gets backed up faithfully, and eventually in multiple ways. Losing even small pieces of fiction is such an awful experience.
In the ancient days of a DOS-based Word Perfect, the program would occasionally fail to open the entire file. It might pull up only the first 75% of it. It happened a few times that I only worked on the beginning, then saved it and backed it up. Next time I opened it, the end of the file was gone. Horrifying. For years after, long after it ceased to be an issue, I’d check to make sure the end was there every time I opened a file.
Now, with storage so cheap, I just create a new backup file every day and never overwrite the old stuff. Paranoid? Hmm…
June 16th, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Sounds pretty much like my average day. 🙂
I’m totally addicted to my computer and (particularly) the internet. Since I first went online back in 1995, my productivity (other than computer work), reading, and general physical fitness have all declined markedly. But I simply couldn’t survive without my computer/internet now. So I have to find a balance, but it’s so hard because I’m a complete addict. I’m caught in a confubulated conundrum. HELP!! 🙂
As for backup, I’ve always been much too lax in that department. Fortunately I seem to have seen the error of my ways, and have recently bought myself two large 2TB external USB drives for backing up purposes. One of them will clear out all the data on my crammed 320GB main hard drive and the other two 500GB internal drives. The second external drive will completely duplicate the contents of the first. A kind of jury-rigged RAID system. And REALLY important stuff like my writing, web design and other irreplaceable material will also be copied onto blank DVDs. Storage is cheap, and your precious work is priceless.
Linda, you can never be too paranoid. Not deleting the older versions is an accepted policy among both computer programmers and many writers. “Versioning” can pay dividends if, at some point, you ever wanted to go back and use something from an earlier version. You should keep every word you’ve ever written backed up somewhere. Text takes up very little space. As a bit of a magpie, I throw NOTHING away.
A good (and smart) writer never throws ANYTHING away. 🙂
June 16th, 2011 at 4:31 pm
The other advantage of versioning, for me, is the psychological freedom. Often when I start changing things I’m not sure it’s going to work, but the pressure is off and I feel free to experiment when I know the older version will still be around. I only started doing this a year or two ago, so it still feels like a new method to me.
June 17th, 2011 at 10:21 am
Excellent, the external USB storage (but neither of you need compliments). And I know of versioning only in the context of software development (I’m not sure it helps much…). However, I’m going to put in an anti-plug for one manufacturer here.
When I was considering going for a whopping 160GB external USB (this was a few years ago), I read reviews, from people with direct experience, of Western Digital, Seagate, and a few other vendors. One stood out, in a negative sense. It would seem, then, that Western Digital was implementing a form of DRM _in drive firmware_. I was never entirely clear on the limitations then imposed, but very clear that one’s own files were being categorized, some “protected”.
Ever since, I’ve stayed away from them, and gone for Seagate instead. Any drive can and will eventually fail, so I do as you do, Phil. I keep copies on multiple drives. And I rarely if ever throw anything away; by the time a drive is hitting the defragmentation upper limit of 15% free, there’s a newer & much bigger drive on the market anyway.
June 17th, 2011 at 11:56 am
I’ve also started moving finished stuff into dropbox as a tertiary, off-site storage. I should do this with the in-progress stuff too, but haven’t set up for it.