One last word about the data loss thing from last night. (Well, at least until I put out the September and October email results.)
Losing 2000 emails of current vintage that I hadn’t yet “dealt with” including personal stuff, some business stuff (house stuff and the like) and a lot of messages I use for task management and the like threw me into a major psychological tailspin from which I am just starting to recover. But there is an important thing to remember. When it comes to obsessive compulsive things like saving every email I have sent or recieved since 1993 (including spam) I am just a tad… I say a tad… neurotic. And I know this. I know that the level to which I get upset is a bit beyond where it should be on a rational basis. I am working on that. I am getting better at these things. I am trying to keep a positive attitude and move forward without forever dwelling on the couple minutes where I could have prevented it. Having said that though, I know I still overreact.
And, as part of that, I want to publicly apologize to Chris.
Although I was actually trying to be “good” when talking (OK, IMing) with him about the difficulties last night, it has been pointed out to me that I did not actually succeed and ended up being very insensitive. Given my mental state at the time, I guess that is no surprise. I was so wrapped up in my own little neurotic disaster to properly acknoledge the great lengths Chris had gone to, with many many hours without sleep, to try to salvage the situation. And to the fact that while I lost a bunch of stuff, with perhaps a few exceptions, if I wasn’t quite as psycho about my mail, very little of it was truly “important” to anybody but me. (Although it WAS very important to me.) Meanwhile, both Rebecca and Chris lost lots of data as well. And much of Chris’s was work related. And, as with mine, there most often was not a way to recover it.
I’m sorry Chris. I *do* realize the amount of work you did, having done that kind of emergency repair work a few times on my own when drives have failed. I realize how stressful it is, and how heartbreaking it is to even be in that situation, and to know there is a lot you will not be able to get back. And I recognize that you have both lost a lot of value as well.
Last night when we IMed I was too wrapped up in my own loss to be sensitive to the work you had done, or your own loss. Most of my anger and frustration was actually directed at myself for having let my own routine backup strategy lapse. Once upon a time I had automatic daily backups of everything that mattered. I let that slip away. I also up until the very last second if I had been thinking could have just made a local backup “just in case”. I did not. And that is my fault, not yours. And regardless of that, I should have been commiserating in our mutual loss and thanking you for your hard work, rather than just being snippy.
I humbly apologize.