A little Perspective, Please

We had just come back from an amazing road trip across the Southwest US.  I was in the process of editing our pictures when the laptop just died.

Total Blue Screen of Death.

I hadn't backed up the machine for a few weeks.  All the pix from the trip were locked away on a harddrive that wouldn't talk.  I vividly remember kneeling on the carpet face-first while on the phone to tech support: "We can send you a new drive, but there's nothing we can do about what's on the old one."

After regaining some semblance of composure, I mentioned the debacle to my old-school, tech-head father-in-law.  This man was the first person I 'd ever met with a laptop and he could still make a slide rule spin (he liked the round one).  We lamented the loss of data and commiserated the lack of backing up.

Jan called back a bit later.  A faulty floor fan had caught his eye and he thought of something... you see, a disk drive spins on bearings, just like a wheel.  His fan had bad bearings and to get it moving, sometimes he had to flip it over.  Could the same work for this drive, he wondered?  Heart in mouth (an odd taste), I flipped the machine on its side and powered up...

"Good tone!"

I quickly backed up and when the new drive arrived a few business days later, we were back in the game.

On my desk, right now, I have a one terabyte, a 500GB and a sweet little G-Tech 250GB drive, each one backing up the next... and there's a 500GB drive back in the States!  This boy's not gonna lose his marbles again, not if he can help it.

So, regarding the matter of perspective:  Sometimes you gotta stand on your head to see the picture more clearly... and you'll probably gain a lot from looking at that situation from a different angle.