With a deep and seething self-hate and rage, it has now occurred to me.

I have lost a shit-ton of stuff. Not physical matter, you understand, but content. Photos mainly, but I’m sure there’s some music, and dear lord if there isn’t ever a bunch of documents that have gone walkies.

In a vague sense of fortune, I know what’s to blame and that (primarily) is endless data migration. For three years, I ran an all-Linux household (difficult) and that sometimes required reinstalls. Lots of reinstalls. Point being that every time, I would have to:

1. back up (usually a delta-backup and latterly with rsync)
2. wipe my drive with fdisk
3. reinstall from CD or USB drive
4. modify my display drivers to make my tablet PC’s touch and pen sensors work
5. attempt (which is the key word here) to get my data back in place
6. updates, updates, updates, updates, updates, etc.

Not a pleasing task, especially when there was a 7” netbook, a 9” netbook, my 12” laptop, a tower PC and another 9” netbook that all needed updating and all had to be in sync. Urgh.

Anyway.

All of which reminds me that I used to suck at backing up which is why now (AUTOMATION!) I farm that problem out to equipment. Because for the love of anything sacred, I can not and do not back up without help.