The Smartest Thing I Did Today

The smartest thing I did today cost me $83.16, significantly reduced my computer’s performance, and took 5 minutes of my time.

Yes. I converted my CPU into a sandbox for the enjoyment of my kitten.

No, really, today I noticed a blog entry from one of my top five favorite novelists, Lauren Groff, that deeply saddened me.

Groff’s hard drive crashed the other day, taking with it all of her work. All of it. Including half of the novel she’s been working on the last few years, and thousands of hours of research for that novel.

As much as I feel Groff’s pain, the pain is mine too, because I want to read that novel, and now I have to wait much longer to do so. But Groff’s loss provided me the impetus to do what I should have done long ago.

I subscribed to an automated, web-based file backup service. It’s called Mozy.

If you’re a writer or an artist of any kind who uses digital files, when you’re done reading this, go to Mozy and sign up for the two-year home plan. Use the promotional code UPLINE. $83.16 computes to about $3.50 a month. That’s one mocha frappacino a month.

I know, I know. You’re reading this and thinking the same thing that I’ve thought in the past when reading similar articles: “I don’t want to pay $3.50 a month for something I’ll never use. My computer’s not going to crash.”

Maybe it won’t. I hope it won’t. But answer me this: Writers and artists, if your computer crashed today and your hard drive was wiped clean, how much would you pay tomorrow to have that work back again? For me, that amount is a lot more than $83.16. But at that point, no amount of money is going to return all those files to you.

And how about this: How much is your iTunes collection worth? Or even just the songs you’d pay for again? More than $83.16?

I’ll even give you an incentive to do this (and no, I’m not sponsored by Mozy): If you subscribe to Mozy today, even just for one month, you can request a special entry or shout out on this blog. I’ll write about whatever you want or say anything about you that you want. I’ll even upload another cat video, because there certainly aren’t enough of those on YouTube already.

Enough said. Back up your files. It’ll be by far the smartest thing you do today.

(Oh, and Mozy won’t slow down my computer permanently. Just for a few days while it performs the initial backup. After that it’s smooth sailing.)

0 thoughts on “The Smartest Thing I Did Today”

  1. I have to endorse Papa Stegamier here. My old computer crashed and I had about 300 Itunes songs on it. Luckily they were also on my IPOD, but now I have to download a program to get them off my IPOD and back onto my new computer.

    Reply

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