As regular readers of The Washington Note know, I have been fairly stunned by the growth in readership of this blog, and I work hard to interact with those who comment — both in private emails and in the public comments sections.
I am also launching a suite of foreign policy and international economic policy projects at the New America Foundation in collaboration with some other organizations.
And I have had some writing commitments to manage — some of which have gone well and the others on the edge of being wrapped up (or were).
All of this was manageable until my hard disk crashed the other day forcing me to spend several days at computer firms trying to extract items trapped in my machine. Unfortunately, “everything” seems to be irretrievable.
When my computer began making “whirrrrring” noises as I was pounding out the final words about ‘pugnacious nationalism’ and the religiously inspired President we have (reviewing Anatol Lieven’s book), a blue screen appeared stating “PHYSICAL MEMORY DUMP IN PROCESS.” Nothing on it worked after that. I had been unplugged, and I chuckled to myself that George Bush’s God might be better than my own — since I had just been screwed by fate.
Can you say back-up? Well, I can say it now — but never did before.
So, I have lost email addresses, schedules, email, draft articles, speech drafts and notes, photos, everything one would save on a laptop that held ‘it all.’
This has slowed me down — and I am rebuilding lists, etc. One of the things on which I have been slow is sending out receipts for those who sent in donations to the Walter Reed Society. I am getting them done — but have had to do some retrieval of lists on this that were a bit more time consuming than expected.
I also lost two articles that were finished and just being edited in final form — and I had decided not to send them until done. Now, I need to rewrite at least one of them as the deadline has passed on the other.
So, these are my problems — but for those of you who wonder why I might not have been as responsive as usual to emails sent, now you know the rest of the story.
My issues are minor compared to real world tragedies that some in this world are dealing with — so I am still smiling about all of this. But to others expecting a note back, hang in there while I reorder and reorganize my digital life.
And yes, I will back-up everything from now on. More later.
— Steve Clemons
