We don’t always do things correctly here at the newspaper when protecting or backing up our digital files. I say “we” but the finger of accusation could be pointed at me in a straight arm manner!

A few months back, we were reminded to use the online program, One Drive, to back up our files. Sarah Morley, our operations manager and ad salesperson (along with Kathy Frizzell) gave us – the editorial group – a lesson on how to use the program. Yours truly only used it sparingly beforehand.

The lesson in September came just after my laptop got hacked – and I lost years/gigabytes of information. I was especially upset that hundreds of photos were lost. Being one of the staff photographers and keeper of stock photos for the editorial staff – the hack job almost made me want to retire immediately.

After two trips to Windham to see if the company there could retrieve the files, hope was all I had after the second trip. “O.J.” as he asked to be called, said the outlook to find my files looked grim. A few hours after returning to work, Pat Schmid, our business manager, received a call from O.J. – Eureka, the files were recovered! We were on a conference call when O.J. called and I think I thanked him 10 times!

Now – I am using One Drive diligently and not putting very much material on my hard drive. A hard lesson learned but now I also have a Zip drive to store information and photos.

Phew. I so appreciate geeks!