Love or hate computers, that is. I know this falls squarely in the 'very small earthquake' category, but I was thoroughly frustrated, all the same - I've spent bits of the last three days playing a single game of 'Runic Drops' on Freearcade (it's one of those games you can pause and resume, and I'd hibernated the laptop a couple of times to keep the game alive), amassing what would have been the highest ever score by a margin of about 40% over the previous best. You'll guess what's coming next - the bloody computer crashed after I attempted to resume it from its overnight hibernation! So I'm still only second on the all-time 'Runic Drops' list. Bleeding marvellous, as my late uncle would've said in his inimitably curmudgeonly way!
On the credit side, it looks like the missing comments from last week's Blogger meltdown have finally reappeared. It's a good job Blogger aren't a safety-critical outfit, or we'd all be long since dead.
Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B
Hi there, Sammy
ReplyDeleteData loss on computer systems is a good example of Murphy's Law - there are often very many ways in which something can go wrong - and it's no surprise that IT people have come up with an eleventh Commandment: "Thou shalt back up thy data". Unfortunately this does rely on you having some means of saving your data in the first place, and I guess that "Runic Drops" won't allow you to save the game and restart it.
As for the Blogger comments, I'm pleasantly surprised about their reappearance. I had more or less given up, or at least stopped thinking about them, given that over a week has passed since Blogger went down. I have quite a lot of respect for their systems maintenance people: I've been in similar situations myself, supporting customers' accounting systems for my employer, and it's very easy to say, "I'm sorry, your data is gone, we can't get it back, you'll just have to input it all again." The fact that they have kept on working to get back something as ephemeral as blog comments says a lot for them.
Take care
Mark
Hello Mark
ReplyDeleteI suppose I shouldn't have been so cynical about Blogger and their 'backroom staff' - as an industry 'insider' I'm sure you've got a much better grasp of what would have been required to repair the damage caused by their outage than the likes of me. Given the public's propensity to be ultra-critical when things go wrong in my industry, without their having the slightest idea of the issues involved, I should've been much more charitable.
As I said, my 'Runic Drops' problem was a molehill that I made into a bloggable mountain, but I was pretty wound up when I first got back from work this morning. If that's my worst problem, it could justifiably be said that I haven't got too much to worry about!
Love & best wishes
Sammy B