Charles's Pages about Doll Stuff - www.dollstuff.net

So, why the no updates for a few weeks? I had some big-time problems with my computer and haven't been able to use it. Luckily, it looks like it's fixed now... (I hope.)

But I want to share something really important: If you have a computer (which you probably do since you're reading this ), back up your important files regularly. Trust me - there's nothing like the cold chill of terror you get when you realize you may have lost everything that was on your computer. That happened to me once a long time ago, and trust me - once is way more than enough.

So - if you have irreplaceable stuff on your computer, get an external hard drive (or another backup device) and regularly back up your stuff. Make sure you have at least two separate copies of anything you can't bare to lose. Don't just move files onto your external drive and delete them from your local drive to make room - if your external drive fails (all hard drives eventually do), your files will be gone.

Sometimes it's possible to retrieve files off a failed disk, but it's extremely expensive. You're much better off just getting an external drive. Mine is probably the best computer-related thingie I ever got.

And backing up really doesn't take as long as you might think. Especially if you have a good automated backup program. I love FullSync. It's not the most user-friendly program (you have to know how to use computer-jargony "regular expressions" to customize it), but it works very well. The best part (for me) is that it's able to back up files with names in foreign languages. I have a lot of files with East Asian-language filenames and most of the backup programs I tried just skipped them.

Computer problems are scary to begin with. Knowing you have backups of things makes the situation a little less traumatic. It's been years since my computer got wiped by a virus, and I still keep remembering things that were on it that are lost forever.