To the Dick that kicked my door in to break into my appartment, then stole my laptop and rings. Thanks Alot. All the pics and videos of my son since he was born, where on that computer. So now when he gets older and asks why I don’t have pics of him when he was little I get to explain to him that some very nasty person took them from Mommy. Oh and you may as well come back and take my camera too because the cord for it was in the laptop bag. So until I can afford to buy a new cord my camera is basiclly useless.
—Sad and Sorry Mom
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2009.
Instead of explaining to your child there are no pics of him because Mommy’s computer got ripped off you could take a different approach and teach your child the importance of backing up your data. It’s all a matter of perspective, isn’t it?
From my and pretty much any other sane person’s perspective Kay is coming off as a cunt.
It does suck how easy it is these days to lose all your photos because everything is digital. If they’re important you should really have physical and digital copies of them. The best thing is to have them in an online photo hosting site, so that you never lose them.
If you have a digital camera, and use a memory card in it, you can still get your photos off without the cord. Take the card to the photo lab and have them make prints, or a CD. And you can get little USB readers for them too.
Fucking Pricks that break into peoples houses deserve to be killed! If they get caught…
In Real Estate it is Location Location Location
With Computers it is Backup Backup Backup
How many times do people need to be told? Please remember to kill a criminal is cheaper than housing them. Fuck rehabilitation !
that seriously sucks … it’s bad enough having your home robbed, but to lose your photos makes it that much worse. may i suggest that you upload your pictures to a website like flickr? then you can share them with friends and family without sending attachments, and you have an online copy of the photos as well. speaking of attachments … if you emailed any of the photos, check with your friends/family to see if they saved them … you might be able to retrieve a few memories.
Cranky, sorry you’re so lonely out there in the land of the “sane” *wink*
Obviously getting a laptop stolen sucks, moreso if valuable (financially or emotionally) information is involved since that is hardly replaceable through insurance. (Lost over 400 photos, and the laptop they were on, on a trip after a mugging.) If it can be of any help, depending on the model of the digital camera, you could likely get a new cable for $3 to $5. They’re pretty much dirt-cheap these days and even some dollar stores can carry a few. As for the pictures, as someone else noted, flickr and google picasa are good repositories. In lack of internet access, get a discrete little usb drive to keep a copy on.
I don’t think Kay is coming off as a cunt. This is the 21st century. It was irresponsible of the OP to only have digital copies of all the photos and videos on one hard drive.
While I agree break and enter thieves should be shot on sight, the OP should be aware that hard drives themselves aren’t susceptible to failure.
While it *is* important to back up your shit, in reality very few people do it.
I’ve learned my lesson after having to deal with a certain university’s laptop “advantage” for four fucking years. So. many. reformats. omg. I basically started only keeping stuff on my laptop that I wouldn’t necessarily cry over if I lost.
So when my laptop decided to break up with me last spring I was a’ight and had my stuff safely backed up. Shit I still have back up disks from 2001. Stop looking at a computer as a permanent entity and back up stuff you wouldn’t like to have lost. You don’t have to back up EVERYTHING, just stuff that’s important. Get a large usb drive. Those work quite nicely.
I’m sure that’s of no comfort to you now, OP. I feel for you. Before I learned my fucking lesson I lost a lot of important stuff too.
I wouldn’t use flickr/google pics/facebook for pics… but I like a bit of privacy when it comes to my entire photo collection.
It would be best to get a storage hard-drive or spool of dvd’s as your backups to place everything you treasure on. The odds of it and your other copy crashing at the same time are pretty slim. If you’re clumsy, dvd’s survive when you drop them (usually) and if you have nails or children, perhaps another drive is the way to go.
that said, it’s amazing what photoshop can do these days… perhaps you can create some pics to lie to your child about.
“oh hunny, you don’t remember when we went to Maui and you looked like a young Sean Penn so the tour guide took our picture?”
Gee and here I do backups just to reclaim the disk space being taken up. CD/DVDs are CHEAP $30 can take care of you’re photos for quite some time.
Plus you can keep them in a safe deposit box. External hard drives are pretty good now too $100 for 500Gb. Hell I’ve got over a Terabyte of storage space now. Too bad the drives are so unweildly.