What A Difference A Day Makes

I’m sitting on my patio to write this. The sun is shining, and white puffy clouds drift across the blue sky. In the background, I can hear a news helicopter repeatedly circling. They are no doubt getting footage of the damage from a tornado that touched down one-half mile from where I live late yesterday afternoon. Click here for the story in the local paper. My apartment is fine and I never lost electricity, so I am feeling very grateful today; however, one of my clients lives in the neighborhood that was hit. I haven’t heard from him today, which is not unusual, and I hope that all is well.

When the storms began moving through Memphis yesterday, I wasn’t at home. My son is at his dad’s in another city, so my first concern was for my cat. I finally realized that as long as the roof and windows remained intact, he’d probably be curled up asleep and never know anything was going on. Or, he’d wake up and find a dark corner to hide in (and where he’d probably be safe). Once I realized this, I felt better.

Then I also realized that my laptop was with me. All of my business information is on it, so knowing it was with me, and the storms were not headed in my direction, made me relax even more. Even if my apartment was hit, I could keep on working as long as I could find electricity and an internet connection.

The more I think about it, however, the more I realize that I must get a better system in place for backing up my computer. I currently back up my work documents on a flash drive every few days, and my entire hard drive to an external drive once a month. But I still feel like I need to have them backed up somewhere online, so I have access from any computer, not just my laptop.

My plan is to begin looking at various options over the next few days, and begin trying them out. Of course, my primary concern is security, but close behind that is cost. I already save some of my documents in Google docs, and that may be where I start, at least with documents that don’t need to be secured. I’d love to hear everyone’s opinions as to online resources for saving documents, photos, music, programs, etc. What have you used, and what was the good and the bad about it? Please leave a comment, and I’ll include it in a follow-up post.

For now, I’m going to enjoy the sun and calm weather. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe weekend!

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