Backups and the Need for Them

I want to be clear - I'm still happy at my employer. More about that in a few moments.

I'm quite certain I didn't know that the airplanes in our skies are controlled by 40 year old technology. This article begins with the story of an air traffic worker who wanted to create a disruption so he set a fire and cut cables, with the forethought that a backup system would then take over. The worker had been an employee for 8 years and didn't know that there wasn't a backup.

It's ironic that I read this article today because I learned yesterday that while I had assumed there was a backup for our documentation on our server, there was not. When the server crashed, there wasn't a backup. That sent my day into a wild roller coaster ride. My manager came to me and asked that I compare a list of graphics that my co-workers put together - one for each user guides we post on that server - with a list of graphics that were pulled from the server.

At that point in my day, I think I began working on what I consider to be a strong aspect of myself. I analyzed the two lists, weeded out the duplicates using Excel, got each list into a separate Word doc and used Word's compare functionality to tell me the differences. It was awesome and as close to working on a conversion as I've come in quite a while.

Just for reference, my love for working on conversions is well-documented on this blog. In the past, there's been conversions from OfficeVision to Word, from WinHelp to HTML, from Word to HTML, from CDs to MP3, and from cassettes to MP3. With each of these conversions, I conquer the tools that are available and that, perhaps more than actually writing content, is what I consider to be a character strength. That said, I realize I am a technical writer at my employer; it's never been only tools over the last 20 years and, frankly, I don't expect it ever will be. I'm just stating I love the times / eras in my career when my focus has been on converting the presentation of content from one format to another.

Back to the story, I worked from 7 - 3:30, which is when I went to pick up Alex from school. It's funny to me that I had insisted to Karen that I could pick him up. I had reasoned that I would be heading that direction anyways because I also was going to be going to the Coral Ridge Mall to pick up something after 3:45. It made perfect sense. And yet, as I blasted my way down I-80 to I-380 to head south to Iowa City West, I thought about how on a normal day, without the crisis at work, my insistence would have been no big deal at all. When I told my manager that I had to go pick up Alex, I was doing so at the same time that my co-worker in Texas was going to go pick up her son from school. I was waiting on a list of files from her anyways so it seemed like good timing. I could see something in my manager's eyes, though.

I got Alex picked up and the things at the Coral Ridge Mall picked up without issue. I was home by 4:30ish. We had planned to go to the Saint Thomas More fish fry and in the discussion with Karen about what time we were going to leave, the ultimate decision was to return to work. I was back at my desk ~5 and left the office ~10 PM. I worked 13.5 hours yesterday, but I think it was more than the Mountain Dews and Pepsis I consumed throughout the day that propelled me through the hours I worked.