2009 August 13 | Suzanne Earley

The crisis has been averted.

Here’s what happened, the long story:

For the past (mumble 2 years) little while, I’ve been “almost” done with a self-published book on freehand feathers for machine quilters. The class I’m currently teaching at MQResource is based on that book, and all of the handouts come straight out of what is in the book.

Each handout is just a part of the book, though, and to make the handouts, I’ve been opening the original document, SAVING IT AS something else, then deleting out what I don’t need for that particular handout.

Only, Tuesday night, I apparently forgot the SAVE AS part, and saved the one page handout right over top of the original book.

This was the FIRST STUPID thing I was referring to in my previous post. But not insurmountably stupid, because, I’m smart enough to have a backup of my book, right?

Yes, well. That backup is on a USB drive, and…when I posted this morning, I couldn’t FIND the USB drive. The last I could remember, I had scooped it up to take it home. For all I knew, I had dropped it outside and it was gone, gone, gone…

I just happened, a few moments ago, to crouch down to pick something up, and just happened to look right at the damned thing, where it had apparently fallen at some point yesterday. I guess I didn’t actually scoop it up to take it with me. Thankfully.

The moral of the story:

1. Don’t be so cavalier with the original copy of your book manuscript.

2. Don’t rely on a USB drive, that could be easily lost or stolen as your only backup.

A copy of the book now resides on the computer here at the shop, and I may even burn another copy to a CD and go stick THAT in the bank deposit vault.

Phew.

I have done something so stupid, that I am having trouble coming to terms with the depths of the stupidity of what I’ve done.

Actually, it’s TWO stupids, the first I discovered last night, but I’d actually done it Tuesday night. The 2nd is new, and it might not be as stupid as it seems, but at the moment it seems pretty danged stupid.

It’s the combination of the two stupids that is the real problem. The fact that I did BOTH of these things has got me so stunned that I feel a bit like this experience is unreal. I’m not crying, I’m not running around in a panic, I’m just…wow. I was really stupid. Maybe it’s shock.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not insurmountable, it’s not life-threatening, but it’s awfully huge in terms of the work that is lost and the work that will come to recreate what I’ve lost.

And what are these two stupids?

Well, I might tell you after I’ve recovered from my shock, but the short answer is DOCUMENTS and BACKING UP. Make sure you have adequate, secure backups of important documents. And if you are making really huge changes to a document, but you don’t want to save over top of the original, make sure you do a SAVE AS, and give it a new name before you start screwing around.

I think I might go curl up in the fetal position for a bit.