Planning Ahead Is A Good Thing, Except When It Isn’t

Last week, in what was an entirely unplanned and spectacular display of clumsiness, I managed to spill a cup of water on my MacBook.

Most likely, this will result either in the death of said MacBook or a significant “doctor’s” bill to replace  the water-logged and destroyed components (the MacBook is currently drying out in a bag of kitty litter. It’s theoretically possible that it will turn back on when I try it in a few days…that would be nice). 

I was frustrated when this happened, but ultimately, it was more of a major annoyance than a tragedy because I had planned ahead. It was an annoyance because it disrupted my week and forced me to devote a lot of time I didn’t really have to retrieving files and ordering and setting up a new laptop. It was not a tragedy because I had been faithfully saving up money for over a year to get a new MacBook anyway (and let’s be real: it’s a computer, a thing. Losing it wouldn’t actually be a tragedy, but it would be tough considering how integral a computer is to my life in 2013). 

Some people are better planners than others, but in general, planning ahead is a good thing. It is a form of good stewardship of our resources to plan for the future, and planning ahead was what downgraded my water-spilling escapades from a tragedy to an annoyance. 

But a word of caution: planning can be a dangerous thing as well, because it can give us the illusion that we are in control when we really aren’t. Consider James 4.13-16:

“Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

So while planning is a good thing, it is essential that we recognize its limitations: it can help us better respond to situations that arise, but it doesn’t give us control over those situations.

“How to be a Better Twentysomething”

Relevant Magazine has posted a wonderful article by Jacqueline Ritacco entitled, “How to be a Better Twentysomething.” I wish every Twentysomething I knew would read it because it contains some great insight.

Here’s a bit from the introduction:

“Now, I finally realize I am tiring myself out. Upon reflection, I see the new Millennial generation coming up from behind with so much energy and enthusiasm, reading to take over for me. That’s a good thing—a promise for the future. I admire you for all your independence, your adventurous nature, your strong faith, your command over communication and your desire for balanced, meaningful lives. At the same time, I remain cautious on your behalf as you come of age in an expansive world in which there are seemingly no boundaries. 

As you venture forth, here is my wish list for you to do well…”

Click through for the rest of the article; it really is worth your time.

Friday Summary Report, August 10

I’ve read several blogs where, at the end of the week, the author will post an assortment of links and/or random thoughts that didn’t really merit their own individual post. After resisting the impulse to do something similar for quite a while, I finally decided to just go ahead and do it.

During a given week, I do a lot of reading (both on the Web and in books), and come upon several things that I would like to share, but I hate to write posts that are just 8 words long. So primarily, these end-of-week summaries will consist of links and quotations that I thought were interesting, but will also include random items that didn’t fit elsewhere. I’m not promising to do this every Friday, but I bet it will happen frequently.

(1) Although this article has been out for a while, I just came across it this week. Basically, a couple of ethicists (apparently it doesn’t take much to be an ethicist these days) have proposed that after-birth abortions (i.e. infanticide) should be permitted on newborns, because a newborn is not a person in the sense of being a “subject of a moral right to life.” This is obviously repulsive, but not surprising, and is really just an extension of the arguments that are already made to justify pre-birth infanticide. At least these people are honest enough to admit that no great change happens in the state of the infant at birth.

(2) Here is a somewhat scary article about a tech guru who had his online identity mercilessly hacked and had his iPhone and laptop wiped clean as a result (losing all the pictures of his infant daughter in the process!). I recommend reading the entire article, but a couple of takeaways: (1) Be very careful about linking online accounts together (using same usernames and/or passwords); (2) Back up all of your computer data on an external hard drive; (3) hackers are jerks.

(3) This week, I successfully finished translating 1 John from Greek (the word successfully is used somewhat loosely here). I do feel some minor sense of accomplishment in doing this, but mostly, I feel a great debt to those who have gone on long ago and translated Scripture from original texts into the vernacular.

(4) As this post remains one of my most-read, most-commented on, and most-disputed from this year, I updated it at the end, to make my intentions in writing it as clear as possible.

(5) Over the last two weeks, I’ve been watching as much of the Olympics as I possibly can. Perhaps I will have a post related to that next week.

A Tip on Using Dropbox on Multiple Computers

Dropbox is pretty cool. From Wikipedia:

“Dropbox is a file hosting service…that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and client software. In brief, Dropbox allows users to create a special folder on each of their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so that it appears to be the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of the computer it is viewed on.”

For me, this is a great thing. At work, I have to bounce around between three computers, and since one of those computers (my laptop) is an MacBook while the other two are PCs, they don’t network well with one another and I used to have to carry around a flash drive constantly. Now, I can just use Dropbox as a flash drive—I put the file I want in the Dropbox folder on my computer, and soon, it is available on the other computer I need to use (I say soon rather than immediately, because the file does have to be uploaded from my computer to the Dropbox server and then downloaded by the destination computer—not a big deal though).

The only problem with this is that if you have multiple people who use a computer where your Dropbox is installed, they could potentially access your files or clutter up your Dropbox (you get a limited amount of free storage) with their own files.

I never worry about the first problem (none of the files in my Dropbox folder are secret or particularly important), and the second was never an issue until recently. I noticed over the last couple of weeks that a ton of files were being added to my Dropbox without my knowing, and finally I realized that a setting had been changed where Dropbox had become the default means of importing pictures on one of the computers at the church building. Basically, anytime someone would plug a flash drive into the control booth computer at the church building, it was automatically importing all the pictures from that drive to my Dropbox folder.

The fix was simple—I just went to Dropbox’s Preferences box and unclicked a few options—and now I don’t have to worry about have hundreds of strange pictures mysteriously appear in my Dropbox. If you use Dropbox on several computers like I do, and especially if (for whatever reason) you connect a lot of USB drives to your computer, you might want to make sure that your Preferences have been set up properly.

(If you don’t have Dropbox yet I highly recommend it: click here to get your own Dropbox for free!).

What To Do When Your Hard Drive Crashes

About 15 months ago now, the hard drive on my MacBook suddenly and inexplicably failed. This led to a couple of incredibly frustrating months, and since I don’t want others to have the same negative experience I had, I thought I would share a few tips that I learned the hard way:

(1) Back up your computer to an external hard drive. 

Of course, if you’re reading this after your drive has already failed, this isn’t a helpful tip, but if you’re reading this before you’ve had hard drive trouble, it is something that you should absolutely do. Especially now that you can get 500 GB external hard drives for under $100, this is a preventative measure that will save you a lot of money and headache. 

Apple has a built-in application called Time Machine which is simple to use and does a great job of backing up all of your data, and I’m sure that Windows has some (clunkier, less cool-looking) equivalent.

I have a 500 GB external drive on my desk at work, and I back up my computer at least once a week. It’s as easy as plugging the drive in and selecting “Back up now”—completely painless.

(2) Try the simple steps to re-boot your drive. 

These steps depend on what type of computer you have, but usually there are a few troubleshooting tips to follow—giving your system a “hard” restart, using the hard disk repair software that may have come with your computer, seeing if another computer can recognize your hard drive as a “target” disk, etc. If your hard drive failure isn’t too bad, then one of these steps might work and then you should immediately back up all of your data in case the problem reoccurs.

If these steps don’t work, then do not keep trying them over and over again. If you have a hard drive that has really failed data recovery services consistently claim that continuing to do so decreases the likelihood that they will be able to retrieve your lost files.

(3) Figure out exactly what data you have lost.

If you have backed up data already, then you just need to get a new drive, install it, and copy your old data onto your new drive.

But assuming you didn’t back up your data, you’re now stuck with a drive that doesn’t work but has all of your old data on it, and the next step is to figure out exactly which files you have lost. For me, my MacBook was my everyday computer, but I still had files stored all over the place—on my old iMac, on multiple flash drives, uploaded to the internet, and on a couple of the computers at the church building.

In my case, I basically realized that I was missing files only from the last year, with a few sermons, pictures, and other files randomly backed up on flash drives.

(4) Determine what your lost data is worth.

Once you have a pretty good idea of what files you are missing, the next step is to determine what that data is worth to you. 

Different people use their computers differently, which means lost data is more important to some people than to others:

Media Storage: Many people have a lot of music and video files on their computers which may be worth a lot of money. Of course, if you’ve purchased these files through a service like iTunes, you can usually just re-download them without much trouble. If you have a lot of files that cannot be replaced without spending money, you should factor that into how much your data is worth. In my case, all of my music files were backed up to my iMac, so this wasn’t a big problem. 

Clutter Files: This would include things like email attachments that you had downloaded but didn’t really need to save, or in my case, things like undergrad school projects that I would never conceivably need for anything again. In a sense, this is actually one of the only good things about having your hard drive fail—it destroys files that were cluttering up your computer that you had never taken the time to get rid of.

Work Projects: Obviously, work files vary a lot depending on what kind of work you do. In my case, I completely lost several sermons which I didn’t have backed up anywhere else. I still had the powerpoint presentations for those sermons on another computer, but the vast majority of the content was just gone. I also do a lot of graphic design work, and there were several projects that I lost. Finally, I completely lost access to a couple of web design projects that I had spent a lot of time on.

Work projects can often be replaced, but it can take a great deal of time to do so. And when it comes to things like crafting sermons or doing design work, there is an artistic element that can never quite be duplicated—I might be able to replace a sermon on Job with another sermon on Job, but it will never be the same sermon. For a person like myself with perfectionist and obsessive tendencies, that drives me nuts.

Determining whether or not you can replace your work projects or if you have the time to do so is an important step in assigning a value to your lost data.

Programs and Applications: Some people use only the basic programs that came with their computer, while others have hundreds and thousands of dollars of add-on applications that they use on a regular basis. If, for whatever reason, you don’t have the original install DVDs for lost programs that you need, then that also impacts the value of your lost data.

Irreplaceables: This would include things like family photos from the once-in-a-lifetime trip you went on last summer. Assuming that the photos are no longer on your digital camera and that you haven’t uploaded them to a web host like Flickr, then they’re gone and can never be replaced. Depending on how sentimental you are, lost photos might represent a great deal of value to you.

(5) After doing careful research, choose a data recovery service.

If you have followed the steps so far, by now you should have an approximate value in mind of what you would be willing to pay to recover your lost data. And honestly, if you’re not willing to pay at least several hundred dollars, then you should probably stop right now because data recovery is really expensive.

A simple internet search will yield a ton of results, but usually you have to actually call and speak to someone directly before you can get any sort of price quote. You’ll likely find a wide range of responses (from a few hundred dollars to several thousand dollars), but don’t automatically assume cheaper is better. In fact, before sending your drive to anyone, make sure to look for reviews from other customers who have used the company.

In my case, an internet search led me to Fields Data Recovery, who claimed to have cheaper prices and also to provide a free inspection and price estimate. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until after I had sent my drive in and hadn’t heard anything for several weeks that I became alarmed and performed a second web search where I found multiple websites which revealed that Fields, at best, engaged in some bad business practices and, at worst, was basically a scam operation. It wasn’t until after my awesome sister intervened with the threat of legal action that my drive (still damaged) was finally returned to me. 

Another (more diligent) search led me to Eco Data Recovery, who had my drive for a few weeks before determining that it was so damaged that almost none of my files could be recovered. To this day I am unsure if the original failure was so severe that it completely destroyed the drive, or if the unscrupulous characters at Fields damaged my drive to the extent that the people at Eco couldn’t do anything about it. The people at Eco were friendly and easy to work with though, and also competitively priced, so if I ever find myself in this situation again, they are the ones who I am likely to call first.

Conclusion—Lessons learned

All in all, the process of having my hard drive fail turned out to be very frustrating, as I went weeks without a computer, lost money in postage and evaluation fees, had to deal with some unsavory semi-criminals on the phone, and ultimately, didn’t get my information back. However, the whole experience did teach (or re-teach) me three valuable lessons:

(1) Always back up your data. I should’ve known this before, but now it has been driven home. I back up my laptop regularly in hopes that I never have to deal with this issue again.

(2) Be careful about who you trust on the internet. Even kids are taught this today, but if you’re not careful, it is easy to get suckered by someone on the World Wide Web who isn’t quite what they seem. Spending a little more time in research can save a lot of money and heartache later on.

(3) A lot of things that seem so important really aren’t. I felt completely at a loss with all of my files gone, but now, over a year later, I can see that it wasn’t really a big deal. A lot of the files I was able to cobble back together or replace. Those others which I haven’t been able to replace may annoy me from time to time, but ultimately, haven’t changed my life.

So there you have it—my tips on what to do if your hard drive crashes. Hopefully you can use my (bad) experience to prevent an annoying occurrence from becoming a big deal.

New Church Website

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been working on a new church website in my free time. It’s taken quite a while because my free time has been somewhat limited, but finally, it’s up.

There’s still a bit of content to add, and not all of the features are functional yet, but it’s a start. I like it more than the older version.

(Another Reason) Why Gmail Is Awesome

I’ve used Gmail as my primary email account for several years now and am a big fan of it.

When I first started using it, I was impressed by the search feature, which completely blew Yahoo!’s out of the water (Yahoo! has since improved, but Gmail had it first). You could type any word in the search bar and it would scan all of your emails for that word.

Also cool is the way that Gmail portrays a string of emails between a group of people as a collapsible conversation thread. It’s easy to see what everyone has said without going back and opening other messages.

But today, in what has been a frustrating and flummoxing morning, I came across my favorite Gmail feature. I was trying to send a PDF of a term paper to a professor, but, since I was somewhat flustered, forgot to actually attach the PDF. Fortunately, in the body of the email I had mentioned that I was attaching a file. Gmail noticed that I had used the word “attached” without actually attaching a file, and then asked if I had meant to do so.

Annoying and potentially embarrassing moment avoided=Gmail is awesome.

Design and Layout Samples

I’ve enjoyed tinkering with page layout and graphic design for some time, but over the last year or so, it’s something that I’ve been doing more and more.

There’s a new link up in the NavBar which will take you to some design projects I’ve worked on. Mainly it’s stuff for work, like our new church website or posters to advertise youth group events.

I am a rank amateur when it comes to design stuff, but it’s something I enjoy, and I’m pretty pleased with some of the results. And if nothing else, it makes for nice posters that I can decorate our youth room with.

New Website

I’ve done a pretty terrible job blogging lately, but part of the reason for that is because I’ve been pretty busy redesigning our church website.

There’s still some work to be done and some content to add, but for the most part it’s finished.

Hopefully this means more blogging in the near future.

Church Signs

Of my many work-related responsibilities, one of my least favorite ones is being in charge of changing the message on the church sign we have out front. People who go to church where I do could probably guess that this is something I don’t like doing much, because it gets changed very irregularly.

It’s somewhat of a pain to drag the ladder outside, pull down the old letters, come up with something new to put up, make sure we have enough letters for the new message, pick out and arrange the new letters and put them back up on the sign (which is partially broken and therefore makes the process somewhat more difficult).

Really, though, it’s not that hard to do, and I would probably change it on a (more) regular basis if I was convicted at all that it was important—if changing the sign out front actually did any good or was worthwhile.

Instead, I tend to think that church signs do more harm than good—someone driving by is more likely to be turned off by a hokey saying than they are encouraged by a thoughtful one.

For example, one local church that I drive by regularly recently proclaimed the following message on their marquee:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TEXTING

While I agree with this message, I’m not really sure that I would include it in the thoughtful category.

On the other hand, maybe the person who put it up was having trouble coming up with new ideas and decided to embark on an ongoing series. If that’s the case, they may have discovered a gold mine. Just consider the possibilities:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN FACEBOOK

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN BLOGGING

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN MYSPACE

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TWEETING

You don’t even have to stay mired in the world of technology, because this is a very versatile theme:

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN VEGETABLES

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN TELEVISION

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN MCDONALD’S

PRAYING IS BETTER THAN READING CHURCH SIGNS

Well, you probably get the idea, and I’ve spent too much time on this anyway. There’s other stuff I need to be doing—like changing our church sign.

Observation #4

Twitter is stupid. Unless you’re Han Solo, your life probably isn’t so interesting that I need an update on it every 30 minutes or so.

Away from the World

I won’t be blogging for the next few days, as I will be working as a counselor for a week at Green Valley Bible Camp.

I’ve gone to Green Valley every summer since I was 10, first as a camper and then as a counselor, and it’s always one of my favorite weeks of the year.

It’s amazing how trivial and unnecessary my computer and the internet and technology in general will seem while I’m there, and equally amazing how soon I’ll become dependent on them again once I return.

Have a blessed week.