Apocalypse Yesterday

Yesterday my laptop and iPhone both took a big dump. This timing is unfortunate. The iPhone wasn't truly dead yet, it had stopped wanting to charge, however, and it was taking the slow spiral into deadness. I couldn't do a restore on the phone because my computer (and its iPhone backups) bit the dust earlier.

So there we are. Or were.

I spent much of yesterday in a gloomy panic about all this stuff, since my "recent backup" of my laptop happened over 2 months ago -- better than nothing but still kind of heartbreaking. I also have much of my data backed up to the Mobile Me service, which performed as hoped for some things but not others.

So here's a breakdown of what was saved and what was lost:

SAVED:

-Email

-Contacts

-Music purchased through iTunes

-My documents pre-May 1, 2011.

This actually turned out pretty well; loss of the stuff listed above would be a pretty big deal.

LOST:

-Bookmarks generated this year (kind of big deal since I've spent a HUGE amount of time organizing all of my bookmarks into a massive repository of links (what I call my IDEABOOK)).

-iCal info

-Any document created in the last two months.

-Stuff I haven't discovered yet.

This was partially my fault, since I thought my iCal and Bookmarks were syncing through MobileMe, when in fact they were just syncing through iTunes, when I sunk my phone to my computer... So that stuff never got backed up to the cloud like I thought it was... and those bookmarks and calendar items went back to the last time I did a manual backup for those things, which was about 6 months ago. Ack!

For awhile I was elated about my lack of artistic productivity this year ("Thank God I wasn't working on a novel or a movie or something, then I'd really be feeling the loss!!!"), but it turns out I've lost a shitload of data (I take and make a ton of notes daily) after all. And my Bookmark Reorganization Project was all for not, it seems.

Still, it could have been much, much, much worse.

Back up your data, people! Do it now!

Use online bookmarking!!!!

PS. I suppose if I were a better person I could look at this as an OPPORTUNITY and not a CALAMITY. Like hey, I'm finally free of the shackles of the to-do list, right? Right? Hmm, come talk to me in a week and we'll see about that.

PPS. And yes, I did try the HDD In The Freezer Trick, which never ever works...