Rants and Ramblings: random commentary about culture, media, politics, technology and whatnot.

miraculous recovery

If this had happened to me, I think I would have completely. freaked. out:

An hour or so later at her home in Bethesda, she realized her purse was gone. Her bank cards, driver’s license, Social Security card, $1,000 worth of checks from clients — she didn’t care. But the jump drive was in the purse. And she still had not made a backup, even after hearing Doldo’s “the dog ate my thesis” story…

She was going to retrace his steps, go to every store he hit. She would talk to security guards, check lost-and-found, scour the parking lots…

She saw a flash of aqua cloth. Her heart pounded — it looked like her workout pants. “Then I see my gym bag. I jumped into the dumpster. I’m throwing things out of the way. I see my driver’s license.”

And there, at the bottom, was her black leather purse. She unzipped it, reached in, and felt her fingers close around — her jump drive.

People driving by stared: A 5-foot-4 43-year-old woman jumping up and down in a trash bin, screaming.

(Washington Post: “Student Finds a Stolen Thesis by Thinking Like a Thief” - 12/22/05)

The moral of this story: Backup. Backup. Backup. DO NOT put your most important information in just one place — especially not a flimsy USB drive. (My sister learned that painful lesson recently when she lost a year’s worth of work when she pulled the drive out of a computer too early.) Save a copy to a server somewhere. Burn it to a CD or external hard drive. Anything to avoid that “Oh. My God. I’ve Lost the Most Important Project of My Life” freakout.