Blogging is something that I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed, whether it’s writing posts, or reading entertaining blogs made by interesting people. I started blogging in 2002, junior year of college. When senior year hit, I got busy with an internship and trying to graduate so the blogging stopped. In 2005, I created the site Gabbages.net, and RELIGIOUSLY blogged. Late in that year, the servers of my hosting company crashed, and all of my posts were lost. I was devastated.
All that hard work poured into building what I had, all the hours, all those thoughts and memories so meticulously logged — were gone just like that. I didn’t keep any local copies of my posts in my computer, and would blog directly on the web interface. BIG MISTAKE!
The entire blog database and the automatic backup files were wiped out. The thought of backups getting destroyed never even crossed my mind. I complacently believed that disaster recovery procedures would come to the rescue if ever something bad were to happen. I thought people doing their jobs were reliable. But I learned the hard way. I don’t even know if the company had a disaster recovery plan in place at all or whether the people they employed were even competent.
Needless to say, I terminated their services – FAST. However, I didn’t quite as quickly rebuild my blog. I dreaded the thought of starting from scratch again, and the reminder of the year of hard work that I had lost stirred up anger, not motivation.
For the past four years, I’ve been paying for the services of another hosting company to host pretty much nothing, with the thought that someday I will blog again.
That someday is now. I’ve learned my lesson and will back up often. Hopefully Gabbages is here to stay and nothing else gets in the way.
