Back Online

After six days with the lappy in the computer shop getting a de-coke and an oil change I was beginning to climb up the walls.

I didn't think I'd miss the thing. I was walking around being cool about it all, but deep down it was getting to me. Had all my files been wiped, my MP3s trashed, my address book fried?

Our lass banned me from her computer on pain of death, after I spent too much time online. As usual her computer decided to crash the minute I got up, which means I'm to blame.

But now I've got the lappy back (and all my files are left intact) I'm well happy. Ecstatic to be honest. I thought I'd lost the lot.

Yeah I know I should back files up - burn a few CDs full of something useful for a change. But you know what its like. Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off altogether seems to be my computing motto.

But it takes a meltdown like the one I had last week to make me realize just how much stuff I've got hidden inside this box of Chinese plastic and wires.

It's like a little portable attic, with boxes crates and files full of all sorts of junk. The sort of stuff that really should be dumped in the trash can to create some much needed order and space.

A vast warehouse full of the flotsam and jetsam of cyberspace. I'd need more than a few gigabytes of CD space to back up this baby.

The dude down at the computer shop didn't exactly fill me full of confidence.

He was one of those dudes who stopped on at school long enough to get a job taking electronic gadgets apart. Just because he knows his way around a parts catalog and a soldering iron he thinks he's Bill Gates's backside. Twenty years ago he'd have been giving the same cold glower to Mark 3 Cortina drivers.

He looked at my computer like it was a squashed bug - and I didn't hold out much hope on there being much left in the old memory box when this cocky sod had finished with it. Spent 50% of the time taking important calls on his cellphone so it took us half a day to get a straight answer out of him.

But blow me down if he didn't come though with a live computer. Not a scratch on it - and all my files are intact and work fine.

But I'm backing up the lot.

Just in case.

B