Organization

= **Organization** =


 * Back-up your stuff (including your internet links) in an organized manner!**

So, this is not a formal post so much as a lesson learned: It is not good enough to just back up your files as a precaution to losing everything if your computer goes for a crash, you must also have digital copy of your internet links complete with some sort of login username (but not password) key. At 4am on Thursday September 16th someone somehow managed to spam all of my contacts from my e-mail account advertising various things from make-up to sunglasses. Upon discovering this from a large volume of e-mails either replying to me to check for validity, or bouncing back due to obsolete e-mail addresses, I turned to my tech friends who pride themselves on their knowledge of all things computer for advice. The basic summary of what they told me boils down to two possible solutions to my problem: 1) change my password; and 2) check my computer for a virus. Being the type of person that I am, I did both. My password has since then been reset, and I scanned my computer for a possible virus. My scan came up blank, but one friend cautioned me saying that it could be hidden in such a way that the high tech scanning software that we have may not be able to find it. Again, being the type of person that I am, this did not sit well with me. As such, I took it to IT and had them take a look at my machine. They scanned it: nothing came up. The only other solution they could think of that would make sure that I did not have anything malicious on my machine was to completely wipe my laptop and re-image it. With this weighing heavily on my heart, I made a back-up of all of my files, signed a form, and with a single tear in my eye, left my laptop with the IT guys to wipe everything and have it start anew. After 2 hours, I returned to the IT desk and picked up my laptop. After a few bumps and bruises, we got the machine up and running properly. I was plugging away, moving over my documents from my back up to my newly imaged laptop when I ran into a problem: I could not get my bookmarks to load back onto the computer properly. Since then, I have been trying to remember and figure out what bookmarks, blogs, wikis, websites, and other miscellaneous things I had on my computer before that I did not have now. I think I am now at the point where I have all of my bare essentials along with a little bit of fluff, but I suppose time will tell. I have now started a .doc file with a list of websites that I would need should I ever have to do this again. Now that I have been trying to actually log-in and access these sites, I have realized that there is some merit to having a record of what usernames I use where.

My reflection on this whole experience is: having to start all over from the beginning with internet related things and trying to get caught up is very difficult. It would have been even more difficult if I had not made any form of back-up of my document files. Backing up regularly is good, but make sure you have a practical way to back-up everything because you never know when something could happen to your machine.