Even if you’re not a jazz fan like me, this video is worth watching. You’d never guess that Pat Martino, the guitarist in the tan jacket, long ago underwent surgery for a severe brain aneurysm and came out with no memory of his guitar or his career. He had to learn his instrument all over again, but he regained his standing as one of the finest jazz guitarists of his generation. I saw him play before and after the aneurysm, and he’s better than ever. So why am I in panic and palpitation over my sudden loss of memory and knowledge…on a computer?
One of the messages you never want to see on your office laptop in the middle of a busy day: ‘ERR! ERROR +5! RUN RECOVER!” (You also don’t want the IT person on the phone to say, “That is just so weird” as one did to me after a previous snafu.) The tech took one look and confirmed that I was dealing with an ex-hard drive. I’ll get a new one with all the right software, but it looks like more than a decade’s worth of files have joined the choir invisible.
Okay, I know a lot of you RTFM* types are saying, “Ever hear of backup, pilgrim?” YES. I backed up or clouded some things (and I’m using my divine right as an Editor to use “cloud” as a verb. Deal with it). The problem is that after 11+ years of work at the same place, and with limited backup space available, figuring out what to protect becomes an exercise in triage, and triage takes time I ain’t usually got (Editor’s prerogative again).
So what have I lost forever? Obsolete application forms for jobs I didn’t get; dozens upon dozens of first, second, third, fourth, ninteenth drafts of various documents that were long since put to bed; personnel records I can snag off the intranet anytime; and three years worth of unPhotoshopped, deer-in-the-headlights pictures of people who no longer work for us or have plants growing out of their heads. I’m sure I’ll eventually go looking for something of relative importance and be up ye proverbial creek. But most of the non-recoverables were things I hadn’t touched in weeks, months, or…years. In short: OLD JUNK
Yes, I’ll be more vigilant about backing up. But as another great jazzman, Mose Allison, wrote, “If you live, your time will come,” which applies to hard drives as well as humans. It’s not just that you can’t take it with you, you can’t KEEP it with you anymore. So be here now and don’t bury yourself in the crawl space waiting for the next asteroid. First, though I have to go look for the first draft of that last message about how the sequester would never happen.
*Read the frickin’ manual