Data Dilemma

We recently had a minor disaster at Rebecca Long Photography. I came home one day to Rebecca telling me that "Fat Bear" (Rebecca gives all of our hard drives names involving a bear) was ejecting itself from the computer. Trying not to panic I examined the situation and came to similar results. All our photos from summer weddings thus far were on the hard drive. Now, we had multiple back-ups of these photos, so completely losing clients photos was never in the picture. However this is the hard drive we were working off of, so all the time put in to sorting and editing on those weddings was potentially lost. I'd estimate about 60 hours of work.

We spent most of that night exploring different options for our situation. I read some forums about similar problems and we tried the drive on different computers ruling out various potential issues. Nothing worked so we figured the drive had "crashed." We then explored various recovery options. They all had one thing in common: expensive. I had no idea about the world of data recovery. It must be much harder than I imagined and not many people doing it.

The next day Rebecca went to a guy here in Birmingham who had a nice website. He ended up running the business out of his home and looked like he had not left his home in a long time. Jorts, unshaven, ratty t-shirt, and open fly were just a few of the first things noticed. He then proceeded to tell Rebecca the doom and gloom of data loss. "Your hard drives will probably only last 6 months and all the things you've been doing have been wrong. At this point I wonder why the manufacturers don't tell you the proper way to use their products. He told Rebecca even he can't do the recovery himself and has to send it off for a mere $1200. We decided to keep looking around. She found a company in Florida that actually does the recovery. She talked to Richard and after her sob story he gave her a quote of $800 if they are able to recover your stuff. We decided it was worth it and sent it off.

In the mean time we decided to revamp our back-up protocol. We purchased a Drobo S. I'm not the best at explaining this, but I think its like a mini server. It has 5 slots for 3.5" hard drives. It uses the RAID technology and automatically makes back-ups of your stuff. So if one of the drives fails, everything is still on the other ones. So we also got four 1.5 terabyte drives to put in it. I also bought a battery back-up for her computer and new storage device in case of a power failure. So $2000 later, we feel more protected and now follow the "3-2-1 back-up method"

• Make 3 backups of everything
• On 2 different types of media
• Take 1 to a different location

With there being lots more digital information and all of it needing to be stored, the ability to do this indefinitely seems like quite a challenge. Hard drives keep getting bigger and files themselves keep getting larger. The fear of losing things can be quite haunting.

All of this was a good reminder on where you store your treasure.

"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal." - Matthew 6:19-20

Breaking Habits

This past Sunday in small group we discussed things we learned about our spouse after marriage that we weren't aware of before. Most things mentioned were funny habits about one another that were usually neither good or bad, just unique characteristics. Rebecca told everyone that I'm kind of a messy eater when we are at home and how you can tell if I enjoyed the meal by how much remained on my face. I mentioned how Rebecca has restless foot syndrome in the morning and will rub her foot back and forth as she wakes up. Aside from bad manners and worn out sheets, no real harm done.

The stories from fellow small groupers reminded me of a lesson I had to learn in relationships. Rebecca and I have been married for over 2 years now and I still have to remind myself of this. Relationships in marriage, family, and friends can sometimes be brutal. I've noticed how easily frustrated people can become with one another the longer they've known each other. A seemingly insignificant thing can cause a huge argument. Sometimes these 'things' are the result of things deemed bad habits. A lot of times these 'bad habits' are not necessarily bad, just annoying to the other person.

I have seen in others and I know I have seen it in my own marriage, that I can let these things build up in me and become such a source of frustration. You marry someone having a pretty good idea who they are, but then there is so much more to learn. While you are dating its hard to find anything wrong with each other, then when you are married some have trouble finding anything good. I mean how often do you hear a person talk good about their spouse when the other is not around. Most of the time its just joking, but there's always some truth to a joke.

So the lesson I've had to remind myself is to not take someone's uniqueness as an annoyance. I married Rebecca because I love the person she is. So why after marriage would I try to change that personality? I think it is our nature to question things that our different than ourselves. So when we are constantly around that difference it starts to bug us. Sure there are things we need to keep each other accountable on and definitely build one another up in love. But I've noticed there are so many indifferent things that seem to bother us the most.

For instance. Rebecca and I differ on our sleep schedule. The nature of my work lends me to go to bed early and get going early to beat the hot portion of the day. Rebecca doesn't really have a set schedule. Her nature is to work real late (often after midnight) and then sleep later than most. It isn't that she is lazy. She actually works more hours than anyone I know. She just likes to sleep at a different range of hours than myself. This use to bother me because I've always been around the conventional wisdom of "early to bed, early to rise" mentality. So if you're sleeping in, then you are lazy and wasting time. The fact is she just works better at night and functions better during the day if she doesn't have to get up early. Why she can't just shift her body clock, I don't know. So rather than letting it bother me, I realized that's just who she is. Her sleep/work schedule is not wrong, its just different than my own. By changing it I'm not making her a better person, just more like myself.

We all have a sin nature so there are going to be things that need correcting from our spouse. But there are also lots of things that don't need changing, because that's just who we are. We are all created uniquely by God and made that way for a reason. We should rejoice in the nature of his creation, not get frustrated at it.

It definitely would be a boring place if we were all the same.