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Tech Tips Articles » When Will I Learn to Save My Work? |
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When Will I Learn to Save My Work? (June 5, 2006)
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Oh dear... I find myself facing a real dilemma. You see, I had this week's 'Tech Tips' article already written and proof-read. All that was left was to save and email it. As bad timing goes, however, just before that happened I was asked to consult on a technical design matter with a guy I am working with on some stuff. When I returned, I found that my computer had decided to lockup. It would not respond-- nothing but a reboot would help. My wonderfully written tech tips article was lost! After rebooting and somewhat calming myself down, I am now faced with a decision: re-write the wondrous article I just lost or start over with a new idea.
So, what to do? Maybe this is a good opportunity to talk about a lesson I have learned more times than I care to admit. So many times, in fact, that you would think I would certainly know better by now. That lesson? To save your work often. You never know when something might happen that will crash your computer. And, for sanity's sake, it really makes things easier if you do not have to re-do all your work.
The first time I learned this very valuable lesson was back in the nineties. I was six months or so out of college and was working as a software developer in Atlanta. It was around noon, almost lunch time. I had been working all morning on some piece of software and was wanting to finish it before I went to lunch. It was a beautiful Spring day. As I was typing away at my keyboard, inching ever closer to finishing my coding masterpiece, suddenly everything went black. I found myself sitting in a dark room. Seeing barely enough to walk to the nearest room with a window, then to the front door, I walked sullenly and sadly to the sunny outdoors. The electricity had gone off suddenly and unexpectedly. I had lost three hours work. Everything I had coded all morning was lost and had to be re-written from scratch. I vowed to never let that happen again.
Usually I do a pretty good job of saving my work often. No, really I do. For some reason, I wrote my tech tips article this morning without saving anything at all. And it was good, too. So good that it could very well have revolutionized the computer industry itself. That one, short article could have perhaps even helped to bring about the end of war and hunger and institute world peace. Due to my silly oversight and not saving my work, however, it is all lost. My apologies to all of humanity. Perhaps some day I will try to re-write it, but I doubt that I will be able to capture just the right words with the right flow to make it the same masterpiece that I had this morning. Oh well... As the saying goes: live and learn. Or, that's the idea anyway.
As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@mikebryant.com.
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