What If Your Computer Crashed And You Could Not Recover What Was On It?

Last Sunday, my computer froze and showed me nothing but a beach ball. I waited. I restarted the computer. I looked online and tried several techniques to boot in safe mode, recovery, and off an external disk. Nothing worked. I called Apple and we spent several hours trying to reinstall the operating system, repair disks, and get the machine to start. It refused.

I eventually took the very large computer to the Apple Store, and I await a repair. Yet, as you can see I am still writing this blog. In fact, using my work computer, an old computer at home, and my iPad, I can do almost everything. My solution is imperfect; for some important functions, I am waiting for my computer to come back from the shop.

One thing I am not worried about is the recovery of my data. My photos, music, documents, home records, and other valuable files are backed up to both an external hard drive and through a backup cloud service.  I am confident that, when I get my computer back, I will be able to restore it such that I will be able to function as I did before it broke.

That wasn’t always the case. This is not the first time a computer has crashed on me. Since that first painful lesson, I have instituted a system by which I back up files in multiple ways to different sources.

What if your computer were to crash, be stolen, or destroyed? What would you lose? What might make life more difficult for you? What would be irreplaceable?

The easiest way to back up your computer is to automate it. I use the Apple Time Machine system, but almost every hard drive has a program to create backups on a schedule. Every platform has a variety of options to backup once a day, hour, week, or whatever makes sense for your needs. You can purchase an external drive and use the program that comes on it or one that is connected to your computer’s operating system.

My children have laptops. They do not leave their computers on desks connected to external drives. For that reason, I subscribe to a cloud backup service that backs up automatically from the cloud. There are several companies offering this service. If you are interested in which one I use and why, reach out to me and I’m happy to tell you about it. I don’t want this to be a commercial.

Unfortunately, the service I used for many years just ended their consumer backup plan and I have recently moved to a new service. Thus my children are not protected by this way right now. That is an issue.

Another solution to the laptop problem is to purchase a micro SD card. These cards are small memory cards that can hold as many files as some phones, tablets, or computers. Most computers have a slot to read them. You can purchase cards in many sizes. My plan is to purchase 200-gigabyte cards and let my kids either automate or manually copy their important files as they see fit. I use a similar method with my school computer. Once a week, I copy all my important files to a flash drive.

Of course, for many of us, much of our digital life is online anyway. Between Google Drive, DropBox, iCloud, and other services, we can keep a great deal of our important data online. I don’t do that with the scans of my tax returns or old photos. My financial files are on an old version of Quicken that I have intentionally prevented from connecting to the internet. And I have a ton of music and videos that would take up far too much space to store online. Thus, I back them up on a drive that sits next to my computer. 

I am hopeful that when I get my computer back (which I am assured will be any day now) that I will be able to reload my digital life and be back to normal quickly and painlessly. Thinking about backing up is not fun, but it is far better than the problem of losing everything that was on your computer.

So again, I ask: what have you done to protect yourself if your computer were no longer functional? What will you do now?

My Voyage Home: Star Trek IV and Me

Star Trek IV premiered shortly after my half birthday in 1986, just before Thanksgiving. I was 22 and one half years old. A newly minted Northwestern graduate, I had just taken a job in Deerfield teaching theatre and English. I had moved to a little apartment off of Route 176 behind the Silo Pizzeria. I didn’t know that Spock’s voyage home, his reunion with himself and his family would be an apt metaphor for the start of a long fulfilling journey, although not into space, but into school.

My experience as a middle school student had been difficult. A late arrival into a small class with highly defined cliques, I struggled to find my place. I struggled to find my self as well. High school was a wonderful release from the difficulties and provided the opportunities to explore in new ways. Then, my senior year, my high school merged with the other school in the district and everything changed. It was as if my home had been destroyed and my friends dispersed. The Enterprise exploded.

College was a great experience and a completely new universe. I boldly went where I had never gone before. I performed in musicals. I tried directing television. It was high school on steroids and things were wonderful.

At the end of my college career, I had the privilege of student teaching at Niles North High School. There I found nurturing and wonderful mentors and students willing to teach a very young and green teacher. I accidentally graduated early and taught briefly at a middle school in Evanston before being hired at Deerfield.

My brief stint as a middle school teacher had been challenging, and as students filed into my first high school theatre class, I felt something I had almost forgotten. Deerfield was about the size of my high school before the merger. It was demographically similar, too. I was the youngest staff member in the building, and I discovered that I had inherited a bevy of aunts, uncles, and surrogate parents. And the students were as welcoming and understanding as those I had met at Niles.

I had come home. I didn’t even know it.

I had not died saving my best friend. I had not left my soul in another person, and Dame Judith Anderson hadn’t put her hands all over my face. It just felt that way.

I worked hard at Deerfield. I still do. I averaged work weeks that were easily fifty or more hours in the building. I went home, ate, slept, and came back. And then, during my third year at DHS, I met my a very special person, and we began a relationship. Shortly thereafter, I was offered a job teaching at my alma mater. A friend from Northwestern called me and suggested that I apply, and on a whim, I did. After a series of difficult and odd interviews, I was offered the position, which would have been new territory for me, and a chance to use some of the skills I had developed while earning my new degree.

But Deerfield had become home. I was now engaged to that special person. I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. Soon, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. My wife and I found a little home in Deerfield, and soon after, decided our children would make our high school theirs.

Now, we didn’t sing “Row Row Row Your Boat” or go on a journey to find God. While my brother did have a unique way of doing things, he was not looking for my pain. I hope that Star Trek V is never a metaphor for my life.

And like, in late 1987, as I ran around the auditorium, getting ready for a performance of the student variety show, watching a tiny TV in a corner so I could watch the premiere of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I had journeyed home and now it was time for my next generation.

So as we move from Thanksgiving into the winter holidays, I am so grateful to have found my home, my family, and been able to bring my next generation to DHS. And as my mission starts to close, I am forever grateful for how all the pieces of my life have so wonderfully come together.

Deerfield continues to be my home, and will be, even after my retirement – my adventure continues.