My Kingdom, for Paper and a Pen

Note to self: Backing up your computer may not be the perfect solution to saving data, but it is better than not backing up.

My old computer died slowly, from lack of storage capacity. I had no real warning that anything was amiss, it just ran slower and slower, until one day it simply stopped responding. I originally thought it was a problem with the fan, as the machine started heating up tremendously, to the point where I could not use my laptop on my lap. The post-mortem by a professional showed there was no free disk space, and despite all efforts to clean it out and revive it, it never ran well again. In the process of trying to "fix" it myself first—by deleting things—I had made one simple keystroke mistake and lost everything I had ever saved electronically, including about 4,000 original haiku poems. I vowed to learn from this horrible experience and never repeat whatever mistakes I had made. First, I switched brands of computer.

My next computer had more memory and storage than I imagined I could ever possibly use up, no matter how many photos I took (who knew home videos were coming? who knew I would one day be writing a 200-page book and saving each version with a different file name, just in case I wanted to go back and check an older version and revert to an old line or two?). Then, one day, this new-and-improved computer started acting up. Remembering the trouble I had had with the last model, and not recalling the solution (and suddenly remembering—there wasn't a successful resolution while still using the same device—it died), I panicked, and realized I had to begin saving my documents extra carefully. Immediately.

At the time, I was working on a project under a strict deadline—I was trying to get the first book I had ever written, a poetry book, formatted and sent out for printing. I had less than two days: the printer had promised that my order for hardcover books could be delivered in time to give as gifts for an upcoming family reunion. I had zero time for trouble-shooting.

I thought to myself, "Why not give in and finally make use of modern technology? The cloud!"

I started emailing myself a copy of whatever I was working on. I have five different free email addresses (each one has given me grief in its own unique way). I thought, if the computer dies, at least I have my work saved in two different places, one in-box and one out-box. You never know when one of the email addresses might fail to fulfill its promise of keeping my messages. I kept switching between the five addresses, just in case.

I did not have an external hard drive backup. Years before, after I had gone back to the store to ask the tech geniuses to investigate the possible causes of the first computer's slowdown and eventual grind to a halt, and, while waiting for my appointment, I had heard from another customer his own backup horror story; he had had a device which would automatically back up everything onto an external hard drive, the option I was considering. When, one day, this external device glitched and fried and all the saved data on it was suddenly toast, its continuing to complete the backup process, which was automatic, then also took the computer and all of its data with it. All data, everywhere: lost, in one fell swoop.

Neither did I have my data automagically backed up in the cloud. The last time I did that, I had hit the wrong button on my computer by mistake, erasing all of my phone contacts, and—surprise, surprise—it immediately compounded my error, by erasing all of my phone contacts simultaneously, from both my phone and from the cloud. As if I meant to do that. Not even a prompt—"Are you sure you want to erase five years worth of data collection?" No. All gone.

I am out of practice for writing things down and saving them. I couldn't find an elephant in the piles of paper I have stored in my house, saved just "in case" I should ever need to go back and find a hard copy of something "important." Writing things down only works for people who are organized in the physical space they inhabit. I am very organized on an electronic device. That is, as long as the device cooperates and does not erase itself. I somehow once fell under the enchantment of the time-saving mantra "Never touch a piece of paper twice"; now I just jot all vital info directly into my phone. I transfer it to save in an appropriate file in my computer later, at a more convenient time. My life goes into my phone.

My phone is normally my lifeline when I need to retrieve something I can't remember, and now that I can save so much electronically, I remember less and less in my actual physical brain. When this latest meltdown was occurring and I realized my computer was acting up and not always giving me back the documents I had carefully saved, I came to an awareness that maybe I shouldn't have saved so many versions of the same huge document to a measly computer. It finally dawned on me that this activity might have filled up the storage to overflowing; except, a computer will never understand the concept of "overflowing." When it is out of space, it is out of space. It does not look around to see if there might be an extra empty bucket or two lying around somewhere in the garage that it can use temporarily until it can get to Home Depot and buy some more.

I recognized that I was in a computer emergency situation. I might have to stop editing the current project I was working on and send it immediately to the printing company before the computer crashed. It seemed imminent, that disaster was about to take all of my hard work and flush it down the data drain.

I started checking through my phone Contacts, where I had stored extra Notes regarding printing costs, copyright registration, and all other things I needed to get this project finished and out the door. I wanted to see whether there was anything else I needed to research before packaging up the book and waving it goodbye, seeing it off to begin the next leg of its journey from writer to reader. I realized that, if I wrote any new documents and saved them on the computer, it might run out of room and the computer might die, so I started saving everything only on my phone. I stopped backing up my phone Notes on the computer, at least until I could get to the point where the crisis was managed and things got back to normal.

After about a week of putting everything important into my phone and not into my computer and checking each of my Notes, my to-do lists of tasks to complete in preparation for the publication of my book, I went back to my phone to read again one of the Notes, a shopping list to which I had added an item just the day before. Not only was the item not on the shopping list, but the shopping list Note on my phone—the one Note I had been using consistently and updating at least once a week for the past two years—had apparently disappeared from the list of Notes on my phone. Strange. After only a few minutes investigation, I discovered that every Contact and every Note I had opened during the prior week had vanished—even ones to which I had not made any edits. Some I had just opened to read, and then closed again when I realized they had all the correct data I needed. There were many tasks to be completed: copyright registration, saving the text and cover design to a memory stick, delivering the stick to the printer, saving a copy of the text in a format suitable for publication as an e-book. During that week, whenever I had clicked "Create Note" or "Edit Note" (or "Contact") and hit "Save," I had always received the "Saved successfully" message, which had assured me things were working as planned—yet somehow these Notes and Contacts I had "Saved successfully" were gone from the phone. With. Out. Warning.

After more trouble-shooting, I found that I had totally used up my "free" storage space on the server in the cloud where my phone company stores my data. It was a really large-sized space that I had calculated should have lasted me a lifetime. However, the additional emails I had been sending to myself, of huge documents (my whole book, many times, and Photoshop-ed picture files), had been added to that cloud storage area every time I had used the email address associated with my phone. Without warning, after I had reached the limit, the devices that were attached to this special area in the cloud simply stopped saving any of my data. I had expected (wrongly) at least a courtesy call (email) to let me know I was approaching my limit, and to prompt me to buy additional space. Nothing. Of course, I now realize in retrospect, of course it would not warn me, since I was not a cloud-storage-paying customer. I had, in good faith, been relying on a ready supply of "free" cloud storage space.

I was out of time for exploring other storage options. I realized that if I could manage to extend the storage space allotted to me by my phone's cloud storage service, my cloud/phone problems might be resolved. I remembered that, if I could figure out how to do it, I could probably buy some additional space, which I now knew I needed. I clicked on my phone's Settings and proceeded to Storage and clicked "Buy more storage."

It prompted me for my password. While I never write them down, I do save hints to help myself remember my passwords. Where are the hints? Well-hidden: in my phone's Contacts. I opened the Contacts and found the hint, and realized right away that I had to write it down, because if I closed the Contact and the problem was not resolved, that Contact was sure to disappear —with all the others that had gone bye-bye during the previous week. I found a pen and paper and wrote it down. I went back to Settings and found it had timed me out. I opened Settings again and entered the password.

"Wrong password," the phone admonished me. Oh, no! Did I not even have the right password? Was my data lost forever because I can't remember where I put the right 8 characters? I forced myself to stop panicking, and then guessed, correctly, that I had possibly typed it wrong. I tried again, and it worked. Now, on to Payment Options.

"Your credit card number we have saved in our files is past its expiration date. Please enter the required information using a different card."

Of course. I ran to the car, got my purse, found my new card.

"Timed out," complained my phone. I went back into Settings to start over. I entered my password.

No response.

I tried again. No luck. Then I remembered. In order to save me from hackers, if I try to log in three times in succession unsuccessfully, my phone/cloud company puts a block on my account, and won't let me even try to log in using my password, which THIS TIME I KNOW WHAT MY PASSWORD IS, PLEASE BELIEVE ME AND JUST LET ME LOG IN!

I remembered that the last time that happened, I had to ask the tech geniuses at the mall for help, because I had not written down the correct way to type in my responses to the Security Questions: capitals/lower case? The techs promptly lost all of my data from my phone and the cloud and my computer simultaneously: this is what had led me to switch computer brands in the first place. But now, my phone and its data was... being held hostage to THAT SAME COMPANY. It was the manufacturer of my latest phone, and the keeper of all its software. And my data.

I turned off the phone. The computer. And said goodbye to the project deadline, waving to it wistfully as it went wafting by. Holiday gift-giving season is so-ooo over-rated anyway, isn't it?

Two days later, I bravely turned on the phone, hoping for a miracle. Maybe, this time, the phone/cloud company had merely put me in an imposed "Time-Out" rather than a permanent stay of its execution of my data requests. I thought I had read somewhere online, at some point in the recent past, that something along those lines had been made a part of modern security procedures, that the draconian "No, you can't have your own data!" skirmishes of the last data war might be history. I went to Settings, entered my password, and... it worked! Entered my credit card info to "Buy more storage." Pressed Enter. And... nothing happened. When I backed out through the menus, it still said that I had contracted for the old amount of storage, the "free" storage limit; and that I was still merely 588k shy of reaching that limit. I refreshed the page by rebooting the phone. Nothing changed.

Recalling that the previous tech geniuses had "solved" my problem by simply creating a new account, I realized that the new account ID and the old account ID might be different for the phone and for the computer, and I knew they had never been successfully linked. Now, I went on the company's website on the computer. I logged in using the phone's ID, but it also did not show a change in the storage capacity. I again went through the process to "Buy more storage" and again entered my credit card info. It appeared to work correctly, yet it still showed I had the same inadequate storage capacity total as it did previously. I logged out, then logged in again, this time using the old account's ID, went through the process of "Buy more storage," and again it appeared to work—and still, when I checked on the amount of storage in the account, there was no change to the amount of total storage available. I tried again, and this time, the credit card information wouldn't go in.

I shut off the computer and tried the phone. No change.

I shut off the phone.

The next day, I turned on the phone, gingerly. I went to Settings, checked the cloud storage capacity, and... IT HAD GIVEN ME WHAT I HAD WANTED! Hallelujah! I checked also on the computer, using the other ID, and that page also said that the same, larger, amount of storage was now available.

I tested it several different ways, and it also appears that the phone has started working normally again. As far as I can tell, the phone has not lost any data since then.

Ah, computers! Little, mindless machines. They don't really think for themselves, they only do what you tell them to do. Except that, even if they belong to you, you are only one in a long line of people who have told them what to do, and none of those other people are telling you exactly what it is that they have instructed your computer to do.

Now I went back on the computer, to solve its storage problem. I emptied the Recycle Bin. This seemed to solve the problem right away. At least for the moment, my documents are now saving correctly. But when the computer had been sick due to this storage problem, the only clue I had had was that the document I was working on had suddenly lost all of its formatting. Then, when I closed it, it was no longer there when I tried to open it again. No problem, I had thought, the document died because the computer ran out of storage. Now that there is plenty of storage, I will simply open up the backup version of the document.

I couldn't find it. The "automatically" backed up document, too, had vanished.

Fortunately, I was able to go back into my emails and find copies of my work from the previous weeks leading up to the data disaster. I am still not sure I have the latest version. I am working on reading the version I use now, very carefully, to see if any of the hundreds of recent edits I had made might not be there - but who can remember? My brain is full, and I can't wait to start relying on computers again, though I will never, ever trust one. I know enough now, that every time when I make a keystroke, I kiss my data goodbye. If I really need to know something later, I will take the time and make the effort to actually memorize it. But, really, life is too short for that. I do feel sorry for those who are now growing up using computers as their brain's "better half," who will be facing constant disappointment when those digital demons fail to remain faithful to their task, of saving and then giving back what we have tasked them to remember so that we don't have to.

Easy as it is to save data, data retrieval is not to be taken for granted. The Contacts on my phone have, as late, been properly backed up on the phone company's website—but they do not save the Notes I have written in, the many lines I have added, containing random information that I want associated with the person who I need to contact via their phone number. I write Notes: the extension number of a person's office phone, the birthdays of their three children, the name of the dog hotel they used that was open on Christmas—important details of life that would be nice to remember, but probably you could live without if you forgot. Those Notes are only saved on my phone—which could die—and on the phone/cloud company's server. They are only accessible when using the cloud on the phone or computer or when restoring the Contacts to another phone—but only to a phone which was manufactured by the same company. Apparently, each phone manufacturer has its own method of storing what their phone users ask them to save; each has its own unique software, and none of them talk to the others.

Another victim of the email-myself-a-copy-of-whatever-I-am-working-on-so-I-don't-lose-it was my calendar, which I keep on a website I created using a free template and a free hosting service. The data is apparently saved using a cloud storage account shared with my email and my other personal "free" websites. When I had signed up for this website service where I store my calendar, it had been advertised as "unlimited free storage." Sometime during one of the many and frequent "upgrades," and probably hidden deep within the "modified user service agreement contract," there must have been a notice that they were going to start limiting the amount of allowed storage, and that it would apply across all products the company serviced. I think I remember reading something about that, somewhere on the internet, at some time, but I cannot recall any of the specifics. I figured I could always look up the details if I needed to.

Nothing free is ever free, and I would have offered to pay real money for adequate storage, but I still have no idea how to get in touch with this company. It will easily help you set up a paid business account, but it leaves voiceless those individuals who might want to pay extra to receive good service, if you are not a business. I have not been able to find a "Contact Us" page with options for buying adequate customer service, for myself, as an individual. There is no phone number to call. No email address. No "chat" available. Nothing for us "little people."

I have been using this calendar on my computer and on my phone for years, and when it ran out of storage capacity, THERE WAS NO WARNING. As I entered data and hit "Save," the site's messages still cheerfully said "Saved successfully." But, when I went back to read what I had written a week later, nothing had been updated. My recently-entered data was nowhere to be found.

What did I expect? After all, it is just a computer. It only does what hundreds of people had lined up to tell it to do; me, last of all.

As for my 4,000 "lost" haiku, I had saved them on my computer and lost them in a computer crash. However, I had originally written them, one at a time over the years, on a social media website, and suddenly AND WITH NO WARNING the site stopped allowing readers to go back and browse old posts that had been written more than a month before. The haiku were probably saved on a server somewhere, but they were inaccessible to me, the author. It never occurred to me I would be cut off from reading back my own words, as the site reworked its programming to "improve" the user interface. However, a few years later, when I casually searched for my own name on the internet, I found about a thousand of these haiku. The poems were saved on a web page entitled "Haiku" and listed me as author - I checked and they were indeed all mine. Luckily for me, I had tagged them #haiku, which is what I think may have been their life preserver in the ocean of data from which they were fished. I have no idea who saved them or why, but I was so happy to read these old friends, which I though had been lost forever; I copied them back from the web page onto my computer.

So as not to lose them again, I decided to try to collect them into a book and publish them on paper and make them available on Amazon's publish-on-demand site. I wanted to be able to have in hand my poems in a hard copy book, in case I lose them again and they float alone somewhere within the online world beyond my reach. Of course, in the process of trying to create the poetry book for publication, I crashed my current computer—and my phone, to boot—for lack of adequate storage. And I learned a thing or two about digital data back-up.

I really have to start writing things down. On paper.