No, not the opening track from Goldfinger. My computer crashed over the weekend and I had to restore from a Time Machine backup. It worked, but suffice it to say I was unable to finance any revolutions with heroin-flavored bananas.
It was super-scary: for a moment it looked like both my computer’s hard drive and the backup were corrupted. This has inspired me to use dual backups going forward—duh.
It’s a reminder how vulnerable and precious everything is. You’re going about your life and work and then if something in the house breaks, or the car, or god forbid somebody gets sick or injured—you stop everything just to fix that one existential problem.
And then it’s fixed and such a relief, but all you did was get back to your starting point.
Whenever computer stuff goes wrong it’s a reminder of how beholden we are to the tech companies. The systems and programs are getting so smart and powerful, but as McCoy grumbled, “I know engineers, they love to change things.”
It’s such a heartbreak when something that is so convenient and comfortable—and probably idiosyncratic—no longer works after an upgrade. Personally, I’m attached to my old keyboard and mouse with a cord and I dread the day they will no longer connect.
So I tend to hold out on upgrading hardware, but inevitably the software gets so sludgy that I have to open my wallet and upgrade...and hold my breath at the dreadful surprises of my beloved macros or software or shortcuts being phased out.
Right now I’m still picking up the pieces of my iMac and iPhone not sharing everything properly. It’s quite confounding.
Anyway, back to work!
I used to use the Time Machine back-up on my Mac. Backed up religiously. When my Mac crashed, I couldn't figure out why I couldn't access my Time Machine. Took it to the Apple Store and they said, "So sorry — your Time Machine drive is corrupt." Since then I always use something like Dropbox and a separate hard drive to back up. And for really important stuff, yet another backup drive.