An Attempted Homicide Averted

22 August 2005
9:40 PM

I got quite the shock this afternoon while I was editing my website. In the online file manager, with the click of a single button, I vaporized the entire site. Between 6:00pm and 8:00pm today, if you went to ryangreenberg.com, you’d see the infamous 404 Not found error. Everything was gone. Today is the day before I leave the country, and this site is my primary means of communication with the world back home. Needless to say, I was distraught.

You would think that, after using computers for 20 years, I would have backups of everything, but that’s sadly not the case. I don’t have a current backup of the site because my automated backup system broke. And while I could reconstruct the site pretty well with time and access to my files, I didn’t have either one this afternoon. I know, excuses, excuses.

The story ends well, though. The good folks at affordablehost.com who host my site were able to retrieve a somewhat-dated backup of my site. I was then able to supplement that with a few extra files I happen to have with me. Through a series of fortunate events following this rather unfortunate one, almost everything is back to normal, save a few missing pictures and other minor omissions.

For now, I’ve learned my lesson. I made a current backup of the site and I’m ready when disaster strikes again. Which, of course, it won’t until I’m not ready.

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