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Jul. 12th, 2008 03:23 pm
...and that was the extent of the fire at 2:30 this morning. Taken at the bottom of the steps, pretty much at the front door of our complex. Immediately to the left (and behind the concrete wall) is where our mailboxes and the door are. We're one floor up and on the other side of that particular apartment, overlooking the corner of the block. No serious damage except for that one corner, which was hacked away by the firemen to make sure it didn't spread. Nothing else got burned.
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Of course, this made me realize last night that I am sorely lacking in backing up my writing. The first time something like this happened (two years ago when someone decided to ignite two spray paint cans...see original post here), I realized that a lot of my writing, while on the computer, was not readily available for emergencies like this. I eventually bought a memory stick and put most, if not all, of my writing on there. I've updated the memory stick a few times since then, but not nearly as often as I should. And especially given the horror stories I've heard from fellow writers about their PCs going kerflooey, that's another reason to do so.
So last night, once again, my thoughts were...I really should have updated what I have on the memory stick...and to tell the truth, I'd been thinking about it more than once over the last few days. I know I have a goodly amount of space on the thumb drive (it's a 2GB drive by Cruzer), so it shouldn't take me long to update that. I will most likely do that later on today. And I will keep it on the desk instead of in it, that way I know where it is if something like this ever happens again.
The other thing I was thinking of was something some of my LJ writer friends do, which is sending it to myself as an email. I have a separate yahoo email that Emm and I set up but I rarely if ever use (not unless you count being constantly amused by spam subject lines a viable use), so perhaps emailing my work to myself via that email might be a good idea, just to have it on hand. I'm thinking the more places I have it available, the safer they are.
Which of course brings to mind the fact that I have quite a bit of longhand stuff--writing, art, and otherwise--that would need to be scanned in order to be added to the backup. Another long-term project, I suppose. I'm already close to finished with my
So yeah. Backing up my work in the near future would not be a bad idea at all.
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On a side note, Emm seemed to be more in control last night than I was, due to A)smelling the smoke well before I did, and B)was already halfway dressed by the time I looked out the windows to see exactly what was on fire. I was still in my jammies. She'd said she was about to kick me awake if I didn't get up myself. I ended up waking up myself from the sounds and lights of the firetrucks outside (there were FOUR in total, mind you, for such a tiny fire). To my own credit, I popped out onto the stairway to see how bad it was, but some guy flagged me away saying it was already under control and not to worry about it.
Kudos, by the way, to the SF Fire Department for not only making sure all was under control,
but covering all their bases and stopping by again today to check up on everything. This is why I never complain that there's a firehouse at the top of our hill and not a day goes by where they don't drive by, blaring their sirens and honking their horns. I don't care that they're obscuring the sound on the TV or waking us up in the middle of the night. They're doing their job, and they do a damn good one at that. ;)
