T-shirt #57: Batman the Animated Series and my Mimobot

T-shirt #57: Batman: my Mimobot Died

I had planned to feature another Ultimate shirt today. Plans change. This is why I eschew theme weeks. I know this was surely of great concern to you, my readers (all two of you), but do not fret, 365 T-shirts will remain random and open to the vagaries of life and existence.

And so, today's shirt is brought to you by a sad event in my life: the death of my Batman Mimobot flash drive.

I love my Batman Mimobot flash drive. Well, I "loved" my Batman Mimobot flash drive. It has died. I can no  longer access its contents. It is kaput. These flash drives do not last forever. This one lasted about four years, and it had enjoyed nearly daily use.

I am a back-up freak. I back-up constantly. I am terrified about losing data. Back in the olden days, when my computer had no hard drive at all and all long-term storage was committed to 5 1/4" floppy discs, I spent an entire day writing a brilliant (at least I thought it was brilliant) chapter for a novel only to have it vanish in an unexpected power outage. I had not saved it once that entire day. I am sure I am not the only one who has ever had this experience. But for me, this experience heightened my neurosis and anxiety about saving and backing up data by an exponent factor so immense it takes scientific notation to measure its true value (how about at least 6 x 10^24 times the anxiety?).

Here's my neurotic back uppityness explanation: Every time I pause, I save. At least once an hour, and usually more like three-four times an hour, I drag the current files on which I am working to my flash drive, which is always plugged in. Folders are always open for quick drag and drop backup. At least once a week, I move all the recent files to my laptop, backing them up again, and a couple of times a month I backup to a third computer and a backup, external hard drive (totaling at least four backups in all). It's on my to-do list to set up an automatic backup to the external drive from the desktop, but then there are a lot of things on my to-do list. I am running a power backup after years of not having one, so at least, I am more protected from the unexpected power outage. I do not store very much in the "cloud," simply because I have not investigated its best use AND I do most of my writing in Word Perfect, which is not currently supported (as far as I know) in Google Docs. ALSO, I have found the Google Doc system to be slow quite often, and this annoys me.

I know that some of my astute readers will proffer advice about auto-back ups or synching systems in a way that would save me time. I do spend more time than I probably need to spend moving individual files one at a time off a "new file" temp folder on the flash drive to the laptop, the third computer, and the backup hard drive. But I like the process. Having to manually move the files forces me to think about them and consider ways to improve my sorting system.

Granted, my system is a bit old school. I was happy as a pig in slop when I upgraded from my original non-Batman 1 GB flash drive to the what seemed like a huge 4 GB Batman Mimobot drive. Still, I had to be selective as I could not store all my data files on the flash drive with only 1 GB or even 4 GB to work with. However, with my main data folder at 5.9 GB, and probably only another 3 GB at most of vital files I need to move around and backup frequently stored in other directories, I am surely going to be able to store all of that data on my new 16GB Batman Mimobot drive. Yay! Soon, Batman will be back in the HOUSE, suckahs.

Still, the death of my first Batman Mimobot makes me sad as well as increasing my determination to transfer files more often. Checking my records, I had not transferred files to the laptop since May 9th. So, to update the laptop, I ran a search for all the files on my desktop modified between May 9th through May 16th. I am still not quite done with the laptop update. And yes, I could achieve these ends with a wholesale overwrite of all the directories, but yesterday, in a rush to get to a class where I would have time to transfer files, I only had time for the search and moving a few files.


Bored yet?

OBVIOUSLY, I find my whole backup process quite fascinating as you may have inferred from the copious text I have devoted to it. In part, I am just working through the process as I describe it, analyzing whether or not it's the best system for my work, or at least a system I am willing to live with despite its inefficiency. At the very least, I will be moving files more often to the laptop to prevent finding myself in this situation again.

As for the T-shirt, it's one of the many Batman shirts I own. I already featured Batman or Batman related imagery/characters in T-shirt #7 and T-shirt #28. I love the cross-referencing. This one commemorates the Batman: The Animated Series TV show that aired originally on Fox from 1992-1995 masterminded by many people, but primarily, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini. The show gave Batman a stylized look that has become known as "Dark Deco," a very film noir-based approach to Batman. The show was outstanding and won many awards, including four Emmys.

I was sad to see the show end. But I am more sad to witness the death of my beloved Batman Mimobot. Luckily, I can buy another one.

- chris tower - 1305.17 - 9:51