Wouldn't you know it, the day I actually pay for Sandvox and get all excited to write another blog entry, I lose all two hours of the work I did on it!
How very disappointing. I was trying to write about Operation Organization, and I had links to 43 Folders and jokes about conspiracy theories and pictures and everything.
This is the moment of sad, sad feelings when a computer eats your work. All I did was create an OmniGraffle. Here is the offending Graffle: Well, weird, now it won't paste in. There it is:
After I pasted it in, I realized it's impossible to read, so I created a new test entry blog page to try to make it larger. Oh why oh why did I ever do that??? It was called "Text" just like this entry is called "Text," until I put my cursor on it, that is, when it turns into the name of my title, "Sad B...Loss."
Loss of work = Loss of motivation to work!
I swear to God, I checked the name of my page versus the "Text" practice page, and I deleted the practice page and not my page. But no, my page is gone. I checked my trash, and couldn't find it there. Regardless of whether I did something right or wrong, it is gone, gone, gone... until I get help. Meanwhile, I am sad and forlorn. I was in the middle of being so excited about Operation Organization. I had delineated all the steps involved, with links and pictures, and I was very motivated to keep investigating the issue... but now, I have NO motivation. Why can't my deleted file just be in the trash, like a deleted photo, or a deleted word document? Is this the dark side of using web-creation software that I didn't know about?
Is mourning lost work healthy?
I e-mailed Karelia, and told them of my sad, sad loss. I'll see how long it takes for them to get back to me. In the meantime, can I get excited again to pursue the thoughts I was so merrily pursuing only minutes ago? No, I can not. Am I respecting the loss that parts of me feel, by taking time off from the project to acknowledge their sadness and feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, and defeat? Am I naturally incorporating grief into my work process? Is this emotionally healthy? Or would another perspective be, "It's no big deal, you worked for over two hours on it, but get back on the horse! Don't sit around being a crybaby!'
I say 'yes'!
Somehow I'd rather be on the side of being the 'crybaby' than on the side of the critic.
Lost work = Fear of Software!
This is the kind of thing that makes me afraid to venture into new realms of software, for sure. I really thought I could feel comfortable using Sandvox, but... if I can't get my work back after making one error, I don't know... I won't trust it...
Re-thinking how I safeguard my blog
Well, the good news is I did actually save a portion of it during the writing of it... so I have the beginning of the blog back. But do I really have to save it constantly? Maybe I need to rethink how I approach this blogging. I invest a lot of time into this, and it's really not worth it if I can't trust the application to withstand my own massive human-error prone-ness. Hmmm...
Back it up in another application?
Maybe I should make notes of things I want to enter into it and do the actual writing in a mail document. That is one program I never experience any problems with, in terms of losing information, and it saves constantly as I go. Don't even talk to me about Microsoft Word, that program crashes out my stuff just whenever it feels like it! Hmm...
Mail with .mac is super-safe!
Then I could write my blog in mail, and paste it into Sandvox, and that way I would be assured that I would not lose my information. Plus, I would have a back-up in case somehow all my Sandvox stuff crashed... and my mail is secure on its .mac server, so it's not going anywhere!
I'm a sucker for the main Apple page
I love the little stories of how Apple helped so and so with such and such. I read that one article about Paul Hanson and now I absolutely can't get the "create link" button to work, what is THE problem here??
My ease-of-frustration when using software is a health hazard!
I see, I have to underline something, I can't just make the link appear as text, because it's cool and hyperlinked. Wow. It is amazing how, if I can't get something to work right away, I get so incredibly frustrated. This quality of my mind is not the most helpful quality to my PEACE of mind. Anyway,
.Mac saves man from losing research data; it can save me too!
Paul Hanson had research data that Hurricane Katrina would have killed, had he not been saving it to iDisk on his .mac account, with its remote servers storing everything.
Backup is a "no" for me
Maybe I should just think of my .mac mail account as a remote server for backing up my important documents. I know Backup exists, but let's face it ladies and gentlemen, backup is supposed to be easy, but -- software is not one-size-fits-all! I just wear a different size than Backup. I tried it, and I liked the umbrella, but the software itself was not a fit.
THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF WHERE TO WRITE, SAVE AND FILE COMPUTER STUFF
Mail is stable
So back to my blog entries. But really, back to "THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE OF WHERE TO WRITE, SAVE AND FILE COMPUTER STUFF." I can't write important documents in Microsoft Word unless I save constantly. It crashes too much for me to feel comfortable with it as a primary writing space. Although it's only crashed a few times, MacJournal gives me the same pause. It once created double lines of everything I wrote. That leaves me with the only other writing program I use-- mail. Why not use mail as my primary writing space? My god, it's super stable, I've never had it crash, it backs up to remote servers, I can start writing something in the computer in my computer room and then pick up where I left off in the computer in the kitchen...
I have 2,885 messages in my inbox
But on the other hand, the horror of mail is that I have 2,885 messages in my inbox. You know I'm not making that number up, because it's too random for me to make up. Yes, I have (2885 messages, 3 unread) in my inbox. Hmmm.
Well, ostensibly this blog is supposed to be a place where my stuff gets published to the web, and then it is also saved on remote servers. The question is just, while I am writing it, will it be secure at that time? That is the question!
If anyone knows of, or has made, an Apple Script to export a mail message into a microsoft word document, please contact me!
It is evident that filing information in Microsoft Word is a good idea, once I make a document it is useful to have it saved in Word. I tried to find out if there is an Apple Script that would export a mail document into a word document, but I had no luck finding that. Ideally it would be as easy as selecting the title of the e-mail, clicking one button, and having a word doc with the same title as the e-mail created. I know I can use 'services' to export it to MacJournal, but it shows up by date, not by title of the e-mail. If I used MacJournal to write e-mail, that would be another story, since it has one-click "send as e-mail" capabilities, but alas...
It is time for me to deal with my mail inbox!!
Now that I'm writing all this, though, a solution is appearing to me: What if I learned about how to use folders linked to my .mac account to organize my mail? The last time I tried to do that, I was miserably unsuccessful. No new mail went in to them. Depressing, after creating a million rules to get stuff into them in the first place.
Are there such things as 'mail documents'? If not, I want them!
What about just saving the mail as mail documents? Is there such a thing? That would be great! That would be the easiest thing to do. Hmm. I don't know.
Writing and filing documents is a difficult task, with many intermediate steps:
1. Figure out what software you want to use
2. Figure out what you want to do with the information
3. Figure out how to file and store the information for future retrieval
Each of these steps is not easy! I do know that I really need to find programs I trust, that can be easily archived. Mail is the most trustworthy, and I use e-mail constantly, but the issue is that my inbox is a ... 2,885 headed hydra... and I need to find a way to archive my mail. That is the rub. How can I archive my mail effectively, while still maintaining access to it? I could easily store the old files on my iDisk so that if I needed that registration code or password from some software from two years ago, or the purchase date of my Aerobic Mouse, I would have it right away, and anywhere.
Well, now it's time for bed. But this has been some productive meandering, leading to a serious problem area in my life-- the glaring horror of how I use Mail!