March 26, 2008 by Chris Harrower, CTIS.

Received an email from a friend, who pointed out that it’s been more than a month since I posted something here. Sorry! I didn’t know you cared that much!

Actually, I’ve been enjoying the peace and quiet of a routine life. No travel, no trade shows, no marketplaces, no runs, no hits, no errors and nobody left on base! Not that I don’t love all those things…I do. I think you know that by now if you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time! But it’s also nice to not have any of those things to “worry” about for a while!

This year will be much easier…the worst travel block is already passed in January and February. From here, the only other really busy time is August and September, and even those months are not back-to-back- to-back travel. Out a week, home a week, and so on. And no, not another rant about a common calendar for all the tradeshows (hint, hint, ABA!).

And the industry is quiet right now. OK, Lois gave in to the Dark Side, and is now working for THEM, but other than that, status quo reigns. What? Lois…oh, she’s the new Outside Sales Manager for Perkiomen Tours! So she’s an Operator now, and expecting to be treated as such (like that’s going to happen!). It’s great for her, and a great opportunity for her to use her sales skills and help open new opportunities for a great company. So Mazal Tov to her, and all the very best wishes!

And that’s the latest, apart from the story below…let it be a lesson to you, please, and learn from my mistakes. And I promise not to stay away for this long again!

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March 26, 2008 by Chris Harrower, CTIS.

In the next week, I’m going to be quite busy…first, it’s Pennsylvania Bus in Harrisburg from Sunday evening through Wednesday evening. Then on Friday, it’s our annual “Discover The Excitement” event here at the Theatre. On my laptop is some handouts for Operators at PBA, Seminar scripts and notes for PBA, and the script and powerpoint presentation for DTE. Can you already guess where this is going?

I woke up Saturday morning, and fired up the computer to check email, and do some more work on the powerpoint. I usually walk away while the computer boots, and I did so here. I came back a few minutes later to find the computer still booting. OK…no cause for concern. We all have “those mornings” when we wake up a bit slower than usual. Walk away, and start the sink filling to wash dishes. Come back, still booting. Now the hairs on the back of my neck are slowly rising, and the concern is growing.

I’ll spare the gory details…the laptop that’s faithfully served for 2+ years was toast. Hard drive failure, or so the websites said (glad I had my Mac Mini to fall back on). But what do I do now? I can replace the box, but what about the files? WHAT ABOUT THE FILES??

Thankfully, I was able to pull the hard drive out of the old laptop, and got an enclosure that will allow me to hook the drive up to another computer. But it didn’t work with the new laptop, or the old desktop, or the very old laptop that barely works, or NOW I’M PANICKING! Again, Mac to the rescue…the drive was readable on the Mac Mini (for a while). So I pulled everything off that I needed (even though I found more files I need, and now it won’t connect to the Mac again!), and I’m setting everything up on the new computer.

And I’m going to find an online backup service that will automatically archive everything I need for future protection. Fool me once, shame on me…

So please let this be YOUR reminder to go run a backup of your files before you end up like me!

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