{"id":581,"date":"2012-06-18T16:17:15","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T16:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/blog\/?p=581"},"modified":"2012-06-18T16:17:15","modified_gmt":"2012-06-18T16:17:15","slug":"melt-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/18\/melt-down\/","title":{"rendered":"Melt Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"I make no secret about my over reliance on technology to run my business.\u00a0 If my brains are the fuel, then my technology is the vehicle I use to deliver.\u00a0 In more than five years in business I\u2019ve experience two technology meltdowns which I pose in my out of office message as a \u201ctechnology upgrade\u201d that have really jolted me.\u00a0 I\u2019ve taken both opportunities to learn where my vulnerabilities exist and I\u2019m happy to report, the second such meltdown, which I endured just this week, was not nearly as devastating as the one which took place about three years ago.<\/p>\n

In January of 2009, my hard disk began making a terribly undesirable clicking sound and not five minutes later, after a fateful restart, the computer simply wouldn\u2019t. \u00a0At the time, my backup procedure was wholly manual to an external hard disk and done when the spirit roused me, rather than on a schedule.\u00a0 And at the time, the last time I had backed up was in November of 2008.\u00a0 I utilized a recovery service in Arlington to get as much data off the hard drive as was humanly possible and all they could muster were my Outlook files.\u00a0 That was my saving grace.\u00a0 Because within my email, that I diligently save and organize by project, I could nearly recreate the preceding three months step by step.\u00a0 I had all my leads, all my proposals, all my invoices, all my data wrapped up in email.\u00a0 And I thought to myself just how much worse this could have been.\u00a0 In the midst of this incredible nightmare I patted myself on the back because I had systems in place that could counteract the devastating loss of a hard disk crash.\u00a0 Surely I would still spend the next three days, with one all-nighter, piecing together the preceding three months email by email.\u00a0 But in the end, it could be done.<\/p>\n

It begged however, for a lesson to be learned.\u00a0 My backup process was not up to snuff by any measure.\u00a0 I learned from my technology consultant of a service called Carbonite (www.carbonite.com<\/a>) which, for around $50 per year, would backup all the files one would need backed up to a cloud \u2013 an offsite server accessed through the internet.\u00a0 Fifty dollars a year?!\u00a0 In order to avoid what I went through that week in January I would have gladly paid that each week !\u00a0 No question I was their next customer!<\/p>\n

And so when this week I experience another meltdown \u2013 my process was a little changed.\u00a0 This meltdown also came with substantial warning.\u00a0 The trouble was, I was on business travel when it unraveled.\u00a0 Had I been home, I might have prevented any loss at all.\u00a0 While on travel I got a courteous but hardly cute message from my computer that \u201cWindows had detected a hard disk problem\u201d.\u00a0 Oh, a hard disk problem.\u00a0 A hard disk problem?!\u00a0 No good can come of such a message.\u00a0 If I were home, I would have taken this moment to ensure every single file had been backed up in two places and I would have even potentially cloned my hard disk to a new, unbroken one.\u00a0 I was still lucky \u2013 this warning lasted almost three full days.\u00a0 But on that third day, when I was still away from my home station, while standing at the Baltimore Convention Center speaking to a colleague with my laptop in my bag, I felt an odd sensation of heat against my leg.\u00a0 Knowing I\u2019d had full control of my urinary tract to this point, I immediately suspected my computer might be overheating.\u00a0 That was an understatement.\u00a0 When I opened my bag, the heat emanating from the computer was overwhelming.\u00a0 It was simply too hot to touch and the smell of smoldering computer parts was rather apparent.\u00a0 A melt down.<\/p>\n

In truth, no melting took place.\u00a0 It\u2019s time I sang praises for how this Samsung was built.\u00a0 This very computer has now been under water and nearly ablaze and it was still possible to salvage some files through safe mode, but not until the computer cooled to a normal temperature.\u00a0 With my Carbonite backup I was able to recover all but one file and my business productivity was not hampered in as substantial a way as it was in 2009.<\/p>\n

That said, I\u2019m continuing to look for ways to avoid the melt down every three years.\u00a0 Given the number of hours I bang away on the laptop, it\u2019s no surprise the computer ages quickly and melt downs are unavoidable \u2013 am I destined for a, dare I say, Mac?<\/p>\n

Curses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I make no secret about my over reliance on technology to run my business.\u00a0 If my brains are the fuel, then my technology is the vehicle I use to deliver.\u00a0 In more than five years in business I\u2019ve experience two technology meltdowns which I pose in my out of office message as a \u201ctechnology upgrade\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nMelt Down - hotel-lobbyists.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/18\/melt-down\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Melt Down - hotel-lobbyists.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I make no secret about my over reliance on technology to run my business.\u00a0 If my brains are the fuel, then my technology is the vehicle I use to deliver.\u00a0 In more than five years in business I\u2019ve experience two technology meltdowns which I pose in my out of office message as a \u201ctechnology upgrade\u201d […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/18\/melt-down\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"hotel-lobbyists.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-18T16:17:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/hl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/crashdisk-300x249.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Administrator\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Administrator\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/18\/melt-down\/\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/hotel-lobbyists.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/18\/melt-down\/\",\"name\":\"Melt Down - 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