We’ve experienced our share of nasty computer issues this past year; recovery was slow and expensive – money I could ill afford. But given that I make my way through life tap-tapping on a keyboard, and my kid needed to finish out his high school years tap-tapping as well, costly or not, fixing and replacing technology was required.
Of course, when disaster strikes (large or small), everything is simpler – if you have backups.
* * *
I just woke my son and though I’ve been up for hours he’s only been asleep a short time. There he was, again, as is now his habit: lights on, laptop open, papers scattered, out cold on the couch.
I brewed my coffee and spoke to him a second time and then a third when he sat up and said “Okay.” He still has to finish one of the last tasks of the weekend though it’s Monday morning: recreating a long research paper that was lost, days ago, because there was no backup.
I remind him regularly to save his work, and usually he does. Especially after last Spring’s data debacle, I harp on the need to plan for contingencies – generally, in life, and specifically when it comes to technology.
* * *
Last Thursday I was humming along having finally achieved momentum on some tricky tasks of my own. The writing was involved and required more than half a dozen files and windows open simultaneously. In fact, I was enjoying a burst of orchestrated multitasking and advancing well, and then my laptop shut down. Zip, boom, crash, only it wasn’t a crash exactly – and though the computer restarted a few minutes later, every document I had open was broken.
I sat stunned and then remembered I had backups. I whipped out my flash drive, inserted it into my machine – only to find that while the substance was there, hours of critical formatting was not. Even with backups, some systems fail.
* * *
I’ve loosened the apron strings where my son is concerned in recent months. And tightened them again when I saw the need, and let loose again. The more responsible he is, the more slack he gets.
Friday night the weary kid says he wants to go out Saturday, and again Sunday. I give him “the look,” and then I stop. He’s been working terribly hard, but we’re down to the wire and now isn’t the time to lose focus.
Is that really a good idea? I ask.
He’s silent.
You know what you have to get done, and I’m not saying no. Let’s see how the weekend goes.
He says okay, and the afternoon I ask if he’s going out and he shakes his head, sitting on the couch, surrounded by history books and calculus homework and college applications. I settle in a chair nearby and spend much of my day and night rebuilding documents, saving as I go, as he plods through his checklist, responsibly. And backing up.
* * *
This morning he is moving slowly and he is late, so I am late. But I rose extra early to get a head start, knowing his day would impact mine. I can adjust; it’s my job to adjust.
It’s a tough world and a complex one. In life we do the best we can with what we know at a point in time. We advance, we multitask, we hedge our bets. Likewise, with our technology. And even if we plan ahead we cannot protect ourselves from every unanticipated event. But if we’re smart, we create backups to help. Flash drives. And family.
Your experiences are making me horribly afraid of high school!
Not to worry. It’s a special program. The workload is as bad as college, and then some…
“I can adjust; it’s my job to adjust.” What a simple statement of motherly love. You’re doing a great job, D – through these incredibly busy, difficult months, you’re taking it in stride. Bravo!
All thanks to chocolate, Eva 🙂 which is certainly having an impact on my “french fashion flair” !!!
Darn it with technology! It’s supposed to make our lives “easier” but its even more complicated just figuring how to use it.
I’m sorry you lost your files and had to do over. I can’t say that I’ve had files lost because my OCD self saves my files on my computer, flash drive, and then, I email it to myself…just in case. lol.
I share the same frustrations with technology though. The LCD on my laptop is broken, it’s doing something funky like it turns all white and rainbow colors exploding in my screen until I can’t see anything anymore. I took it to Geek Squad and the geek said my computer was “old” technology (even though I bought my Vista only 2 years ago). He said it’ll take 2-3 weeks to fix, if they have the parts the replace the LCD. Otherwise, I’ll have a brand new computer. I guess I should consider that an upgrade.
Maybe I’m a little old fashioned (or practical) but I don’t ask for much, I only need something that works and reliable. Most phones nowadays are unrecognizable, I remember the days when people actually use them to make calls. 🙂
I love your comment about adjusting for your son. I was an LLL Leader for ten years. One of the things that helped me most as a new mom was reading in an LLL publication that the baby is family member who is least able to adjust so it is up to mom and dad to make the necessary changes. (I paraphrase, badly. Apologies!) Reading about your son makes me remember my daughter’s junior and senior years of high school. There are similarities between her as a baby and as a teen – over-stressed, over-tired, over-worked. The best thing I could do is what you’re doing for your son, create the comfort and the space for her to do what she needed to do.
@Andrea – Wonderful perspective. I guess all we can do is pay attention, provide a little perspective, and accommodate when they can’t. (And feed them!) Thank goodness someone else recalls Junior and Senior years as tough going! Was college easier?
@Glacel – oh those techno-snafus do seem to be the worst! We’re far more reliant on our tools than we realize, until they fail us.
My daughter lives on campus, so I don’t see her day-to-day stress. She seems to be managing everything well. It’s the first semester of her freshman year. I remember how exhausted I was at the end of each semester. I imagine it will be the same for her. She works so hard all the time.
That’s the hardest time – first semester freshman year. (Are you sending CARE packages?) I know we worked hard in high school and college – but I wonder if kids are working harder now or it just seems that way to us. It seems like they don’t get enough “kid time” before adulthood hits.
Backups backups backups. So important. For a long time I was backing up to DVDs, but the number of DVDs required kept increasing and the time it took to do it kept increasing and it became impractical. So we bought an external hard drive, but we were sloppy about backing up because it seemed to take so long. Finally, I found Sync Toy (free Microsoft software) where you set up folder pairs and just tell it to “run all” and it’s done in a very short time. If I was really smart, I’d have a second backup of critical files on the hard drives too (files on the C drive backed up to D and vice versa) but I’m not that smart. Then every year I put my year’s photos and the photo albums for that year on DVDs.
Love this — the analogy, the simple truth behind it. I find myself adjusting in both big and small ways as my children move further into independence. They’ll always need us, won’t they? Even if it’s just to be there beside them as they hurtle toward adulthood.
Yes, I think they will, Kelly. In different ways as they get older. It’s good stuff.
It might be our jobs, as parents, to adjust, but, dang it, I don’t always do this fluidly! I feel much like an old, worn down computer (like my own) when it comes to changing plans according to my kids’ schedules and whatever. You know–slow processing, slow internet speed, slow everything. I guess, though, that’s the beauty of parenting: We learn as we go.
Although, I haven’t saved any data on how I currently parent–the successes or failures. Shoot, hopefully that doesn’t mean I’ll make the same mistakes twice (or three) times.
I make some of the same mistakes 22 times, Amber. We make our mistakes until we learn. And kids push our buttons (expertly). Shifting how we respond is no easy thing, and that “fluidly” has taken years.