Manure flavored icing on the cake

by Duf Anything and Everything

So, yesterday Ali calls me from home saying that she got a pop up on her computer again.  It wasn’t the XP Antivirus shamware but a pop up none the less so something still was not 100% cool on her system.  She asked if I could just reload the computer from scratch.  I told her I could but if I was going to spend the time to do that I would rather reload Windows 7 instead of XP.  I told her to drop it off to me at work and I would load it up.

I did no additional back up of her data once I had the pc in my office since I had two complete backups at home on my NAS.  I blew the system away and loaded it with a fresh copy of 64 bit Windows 7.  Adios spyware.   

While I had the pc here I opened it up and cleaned it out.  In the process I noticed that the huge heat sink that is attached to the cpu was only screwed down tight on one side.  Wow that explains why the variable speed fan on this thing was always running so fast (and loud).  Heat wasn’t getting dissipated to the heat sink.  I screwed the sucker down tight which resulted in a much quieter computer, another bonus Ali will appreciate.  I was anxious to have Ali sit down in front of her quieter, faster, clean computer last night.   

I gave Ali updates throughout the day telling her things were going well.  Once I got home I hooked the pc back up, joined the domain, set up her mail and started on reloading some of the other apps that she uses.  Once she got home I proudly showed her my handiwork.  Ali was excited to have her pc back in working order.

One of the things I had to do yet was restore Ali’s various data files from the back up.  Windows 7 isn’t compatible with ntbackup so I had to restore her files into a folder on the server.  As I started copying data across I noticed that the location where her My Documents stuff should be was empty.  “Hmm, odd” I thought to myself.  I had so many other things to get done on her pc I just assumed I messed something up when I did the restore job so I started the restore again while I worked on other things.

So the second restore finishes and still My Documents is empty.  Ok now I am concerned but not panicked.  After all I have the second back up that was taken a week earlier.  So I go into that file and look, My Documents is empty….  

For those of you that don’t know much about computers, My Documents is usually home to the majority of your data.  Seeing this directory empty on the back up file is a very bad thing.  After double and triple checking I finally leaked the word to Ali that there could be a problem with some of her data.  She did not react well.

She has TONS of stuff on her computer.  The thought of losing all of it brought her to tears.  She was angry at me and not at me at the same time.  After all I am the computer guy, I should be responsible for ensuring her data is safely migrated.  I made the assumption that having two full back ups was plenty of safety net.  I had no reason to think there was a problem with missing files in the back up, yet if I would have checked it I would have seen.

I was angry.  It seems the past few weeks I have been going through multiple very frustrating IT conundrums, something that I don’t run into often since I normally keep things on a pretty even keel.  I couldn’t believe after all the effort I put into addressing the issues with Ali’s PC that the f’ing back up was incomplete.  At one point when Ali was sobbing I blurted out something stupid like “I’m sorry, shit happens…”  It was the wrong choice of words and was just a by-product of my incredible frustration as the reality of the foo-pah was upon me fully.

So I was scrambling mentally to think of any other back ups of her data I might have.  I had one other back up but it was made last March prior to migrating Ali from her old laptop to the Dell.  Luckily I still had the back up and it had an intact My Documents folder in it.  So the good news is I pulled back some her data, the bad news is the stuff is a year old. 

At least having that data back was better than nothing.  Ali should be able to rebuild some stuff back between the combination of the old files and both paper records and stuff that is in Quicken or online bank statements.  Of course there is also stuff that is just gone for good and there is nothing I can do about it.

I’ve had this happen to me a few times over my pc lifetime from a combination of hardware and human error.  Losing data you don’t expect to lose is a bad feeling but most like negative items in your life,  time dulls the sting a bit as you realize that out of what you lost, much of it actually isn’t crucial.

I told Ali that if she has stuff on her system that is that crucial we need to take further steps to insure it’s safety.  I stood by her as I walked her through installing Dropbox, something I have used for quite awhile.  It’s an awesome service that gives your data 9 lives.  You install the small client on as many pc’s as you want, or your Iphone, save any critical data to your My Dropbox folder and that data is then replicated to ALL of the machines as well as being available from any internet connected pc by logging on to your dropbox account on their web site.

You get 2 gigs of storage space for free.  It is an AWESOME service.  If you want to check it for yourself use this link, it will get me a small spiff of extra storage space.  https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTIzNTczNDE5

So I went to bed feeling guilty about the whole thing.  Of course it’s my fault in the end, even if the situation would not have been expected by most IT people.  A full back up usually is a full back up. In retrospect, I am theorizing that there was soemthing wrong in the syntax of the ntbackup command I used to back up her pc.  I am guessing that the My Documents folder was never backed up.

Things could be worse, I could be Jessie James.  It’s amazing how the seemingly picture perfect facade of his marriage to Sandra Bullock has been obliterated in the span of a few days.  Jessie has gone from the devoted husband to a serial adulterer just like that.  I find myself never being all that surprised however when these situations come to light.  Marriage, if you look at it from a pure nature perspective is unnatural.  Males have the primal urge to conquer and bed as many women as possible.  It’s hard wired into our brains.  The difference is whom does a better job of repressing that urge or not.

The other saying that I always find myself thinking when these situations come up is “Generally speaking, the more you know about a person, the more you will dislike them….”