CSotD: Uphill, through snowdrifts and without Ctl-Z
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Does this happen to anybody anymore?
Adam@Home had a computer crash and lost two months work. The arc begins here and is pretty funny to watch, if you're into schadenfreude. And who isn't?
I've been pondering the arc, however, because I wonder how often this happens these days? Not that Basset and Harrell aren't technically accurate: They are depicting a whole conversion-to-doorstop event, which is about the only way you could lose two months worth of work.
There are still any number of other ways to lose an afternoon's work, if you are dumb enough and truly dedicated to the task, but wonderful developments like Ctl-Z and "step backwards" have made it more of a challenge than it once was.
In my most recent newspaper incarnations, we used QuarkXpress as our layout program, and it would periodically freeze up, which meant you could see your work on the screen but the only way out of the freeze-up was to crash and reboot, so whatever you hadn't saved was gone forever.
The obvious answer is to save often, but, in laying out pages, you frequently move things all around and, if you save something and then have a freeze-up, you may end up reverting to a version that is pretty far afield from anything you actually want to use.
Yes, it's better than starting from scratch. Shaddap.
The usual explanation for not having saved was that you were in that final crazy race to deadline, at which point you are running on adrenalin and on a type of frenzied panic that doesn't involve "save" because save takes a moment and you don't have a moment and you're going to file the damn thing any minute now anyway so why bother.
Famous last run-on sentence.
I don't fret too much about losing work since, like Adam, I started working @home. There are any number of reasons for this, some universal, some specific.
1. Ctl-Z. Back in about 1988, I lost an entire Sunday cover story after three hours, because I hit "clear from start" instead of "clear from cursor" on an even-then ancient newsroom program with no undo function.
Ctl-Z is your best friend, though I will say it does put me in mind of how my grandfather said they had much better aural memories before recording was invented because they had to. Similarly, I seem to use Ctl-Z a lot and wonder if I was more cautious back when every key stroke might be my last.
2. I work on a laptop, so, when there is a power failure, I don't lose what I'm working on. I may have to take the laptop elsewhere to finish up, but I can do that, and it's nice to be able to just hit "save" and head for the library.
And I'm not one of those people who works in coffeeshops, but, when I do take my laptop out of the building, I back up everything to an external hard drive, which I probably wouldn't, if I took it around more often. It's never come up, but at least a meltdown wouldn't be the end of everything.
3. Computers are much cheaper than in the past. My first computer, a TI-Pro, cost about three grand. That was 30 years ago and three grand was even more then than it is now.
Now, when a laptop begins to act funky, I get another one. I've got three working laptops in the house, one of which I use to stream video while I do dishes (kitchens being a not-good environment for computers), one of which is connected to the TV in the livingroom (because it's gotta be somewhere and so there it is, all hooked up) and the newest, most stable one, which I use for actual work.
I don't know if the other two get jealous or not, but this one gets the flowers and smooches and TLC. And will continue to do so, long as it continues to behave. And, if it stops behaving, I'll stick it out in the kitchen.
And you wonder why I'm single.
4. I'm the only one touching any of my computers. In the past four years since I went freelance, I've had one Quark freeze-up and no problems with InDesign.
Knock wood.
But I ascribe it not to luck but to the fact that I'm no genius and thus no geniuses ever get anywhere near my machine.
There was a point where only gamers and geeks knew anything about computers, and so the techies in the building were, well, more interesting than was necessarily desireable. And a little obsessed with going around improving everything.
One of my favorite classics from Michael Jantze's "The Norm":
(As it happens, the classic Norm at GoComics today is related:)
However, this factor really, really varied from company to company.
At one paper, the head of production was computer-literate and detail-oriented and, while his minions did ramble around the plant upgrading things without a whole lot of warning, their upgrades worked and actually — gasp! — improved the final product.
At others, I've had geniuses who came up with creative workarounds and alternatives to things in the software that had been put there for a reason. They'd perform actions on your machine that made it much faster until it stopped working entirely.
And at my last paper, the lack of investment meant that each computer had a different version of both Quark and Photoshop, and that we didn't have a techie on staff but rather, when something went wrong, we called in a guy who didn't actually understand what Quark did, and I wish I were making that up.
He was quite personable, but, not only did he tie up your machine much longer than necessary, but, when he was finished, he hadn't actually addressed the issue, unless the issue was something along the lines of "won't boot up" or "won't load the program" or … well, that was about it. The machines were plugged in all the time, so his other area of diagnostic expertise never came up.
Anyway, I know you can lose a lot in a computer crash, but I haven't seen one in a good long time and I've gotta say I don't miss them very much.
Better than a Pulitzer:
Texas Governor Rick Perry wrote a letter to the Sacramento Bee demanding an apology for this Jack Ohman cartoon.
Lucky bastard. I hope they gave him the original so he could have it framed.
Jack had already addressed criticism of the cartoon in this blog posting, which explains the choices he made, while you'll note in the previous link that his editor directly answered Perry's complaint.
His editor's response took 115 words.
Tsk-tsk — such wasteful extravagance! Doesn't he know we all have to do more with less these days?
My response would have saved the company 113 words.
"First Amendment."
Why? What did you think I meant?
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