Blown Off-Track

Hurricanes have a funny way of throwing things off-track, and it certainly has affected my posting to this blog.  Gustav’s effects are still being felt, with roads, houses and bridges all disappearing from its onslaught.

The irony is  that it’s exactly the kind of thing that happens each time a natural disaster hits our shores.  What I have not yet learned is how to effectively deal with this kind of drama, although I suspect that it has something to do with going back to basics.

When my computer crashed the day after the hurricane hit, it brought all my work to a complete halt, and forced me to do a complete re-install when I discovered that my copy of XP Professional had gone bad.

It took me several days to get everything functional, and by then I was dealing with another hurricane – Ike – as I tried to make my way to Puerto Rico for a meeting.

Luckily, I lost only a few non-essential files ( as far as I know so far) and learned a lot about the need to do a good job of “Storing.”  This is the one fundamental I like the least, and have the hardest time implementing, but I was glad that I did a disaster recovery plan some time ago and was able to plug some empty holes.

Thank you Mozy.com (an awesome passive back-up system that saved me from total destruction.)

Yet, I still think that I have a way to go before  I am altogether happy about my productivity after a hurricane.

I just hope that I won’t have to learn that particular lesson this year!