To be honest, I’m surprised I ever thought it would work. When my last laptop putzed out on me months ago, I thought I could squeeze out a system of using the computers available at my job every once in a while to update my blog, type up some stories, send some stories out, that sort of thing. The writing work took over the blog work, since time was limited, but things were going pretty well. I got a lot of stories out, got some decent edits in on some older stories, saving them onto a zip drive that also allowed me to use my boyfriend’s parents’ computer when we visited. All was going pretty well, until…
…I lost it. It was this little tiny thing, no bigger than my thumb, in a bright green casing. Anyone who knows me is probably impressed that it took me this long to misplace it. There’s a chance I might have left it at the eventual in-laws’ place, but my bet is that I left it plugged into the computer at work, and it is now long, long gone, swiped up by someone who wasn’t kind enough to leave it with customer service. Which is really lame because my name, address, phone number, and email are at the top of every single document on that drive, so it’s not like it would be that difficult for the person to track down who it belonged to.
So, the time has come (the Walrus said) to buckle down and get a new laptop, since the previous method wasn’t exactly the best after all. It’s going to be a cheap chromebook again, because, really, that’s all I need right now, a place to save all my work and maybe email and submit it all out to various journals and what not. Hopefully, it also means I’ll be blogging a bit more, too.
It’s going to put a lovely ding in the money I’ve been working on saving up, but what’s that they say? You have to spend money to make money? Yeah, I’ve got the spending part down. Now if I could only get a better grip on the latter.
I am so proud of you!!! BIG HUGS, Ingrid
Aw, shucks! Thanks, Ingrid.
I have a Dropbox account so I don’t lose flash drives. Just a suggestion. Good luck getting a computer. What were you considering?
You’d think I’d learn by now to back my shit up, but noooooooooo. And thanks! I’m leaning toward a cheapo Acer Chromebook. I’ve worked with Chromebooks before, and they’re pretty simple and will get the job done, which is the important part. Plus, you can really only use Googledocs with them, which means access to the work wherever I have access to email, without any little things that can get lost again.
That’s another good choice when you work everywhere and write from multiple computers. That way, it’s always there and up to date. I do about 99% of everything on my browser and hardly anything with any other programs. Regardless of whether you’re using Mac, Linux, or Windows everything works the same.
I am so sorry you lost the flash drive. John’s suggestion is a good one. I would suggest saving to Google Drive as well as Dropbox. There’s a librarian expression, “Lots of copies keep stuff safe,” and it has saved my work more than once.
Bad karma to the person who took the drive, and kudos to you for concentrating on a solution.
I’m an obsessive saver; you think I’d be an obsessive backer, too, but that just makes too much sense. I might have to give this Dropbox a little looksee, too.
Check out my new blog post, “Why Racial Profiling is a Problem”
https://lgwynn.wordpress.com/2016/08/03/why-racial-profiling-is-a-problem/