Tag: exhortation

No more blog

That’s the future I saw when, with a sick, sinking feeling in my stomach, I realized that I had just deleted ALL of andrewandlisa.org. Four years worth of thoughts, news, and photos were gone without a trace. I searched in vain for a way to recover what I’d deleted, but I found no viable options. The sick feeling didn’t abate.

Luckily, I found a month-old backup that I was able to restore. Then, with a bit of help from my friend (Google Reader), I was able to painstakingly reconstruct the last month’s worth of blog activity. So pardon the blog for acting a little weird in some spots. There are rough patches that won’t be going away.

Is there a lesson in all of this? Oh, yeah, there is! We all need to be thinking about backing up the data that matters to us. Imagine if that loss wasn’t just a blog that contained your second child’s birth announcement, but was instead your financial records or all your family photos. Do you feel that sick feeling? I know I get nauseous again just thinking about it.  If you haven’t backed up your important data, YOU SHOULD NOT SLEEP UNTIL YOU DO.

I recommend backing up your data to an external hard drive.  They are getting cheaper every day, and they are very easy to use.  If you don’t know how to start backing up your important information, please call me and I’ll help you get set up.  This is too important to skip.

Be safe out there,

Andrew

Liam’s sickness and the power of social networking

Two interesting parts of my life coincided this week: illness and online social networking.

I’m notorious for trying out new internet-based services and web sites. Jott.com takes voice notes from my phone and either schedules appointments with my Google calendar or adds them to my to-do list at rememberthemilk.com. Recently, I linked my account at twitter.com with my profile on the social networking site facebook.com. When I tweet (update my current activities on Twitter in 140 characters or less), a widget on my blog updates, my account at pownce.com updates, and my facebook status updates, as well.

I used to wonder if all this interconnected geekiness held any utility. After all, most of my posts are pretty mundane, to wit:

Today I stopped wondering about the utility because of this post:

Since posting that tweet, I’ve been contacted by three different people to ask how Liam is doing. A family member wrote an e-mail because she saw the news on the blog. A friend sent a text message because he caught the news on twitter. And another friend stopped by our house because she saw my status on Facebook.

This online social network that is usually just a toy now means something; it’s extended the awareness of my friends and allowed me to share the smaller news in my life with people I care about but don’t usually get to see face-to-face. These aren’t some random online friends from a chat room somewhere; they are my real-life friends and family with whom I connect via the increasingly digital fabric of our everyday lives. I may not sit down to coffee with them every day, but we share over HTML tables instead of cafe tables and via Javascript instead of the black caffeinated stuff.

So I challenge you, Shinnfans, to live the digital life with intentionality. Take advantage of ever-easier online social tools and use the opportunity to be transparent and share from your life-stream. Whether you need to e-mail someone an encouraging note or you link with me at twitter.com and sharing your small daily news, be real, caring and Christ-like about it.

And as for Liam, I wish I could report better news. He’s a pretty sick little boy right now, and it’s hard on all of us. But I guarantee that when I have better news to report, you’ll see it in one of my data feeds!