• Anything that I created: Sure, I can create them again, but they'll never be exactly what they were before - and while it might be argued that "assuming one gets better over time, the recreations should be better than the originals", the real danger lies in human memory and the fact that my more complex projects will end up totally changing form, and dozens upon dozens of smaller projects risk being forgotten completely and never recreated.
• Anything collaborative: When I host a server of some kind or another, I'm making an unspoken agreement that the people who come and invest their time on it will have their efforts waiting there for them when they come back. And while the boxofit.com community is currently small enough to be understanding and empathetic/sympathetic of the situation, it doesn't change that fact that if you had invested hours upon hours into terraria or minecraft only to be forced to start all over, you're far more likely to revert to single player and assume responsibility for your own save game.
• Email Archives: Mail servers are small and in effort to keep them tidy, they require frequent purging of old information. Regrettably, just because information is old doesn't mean it's useless; especially when you do any level of work in contracting, record keeping, Information Technology, or Administration (and regrettably for my DoD-bonded ass, I've done ALL of those, so having that information on hand in the event I need it is kind of important -- especially knowing how often one needs to highlight a line within an email and say "No, no. You said right here that your company would supply blahblahblah for blurgleblurgle.")
• Anything work related: This is basically a combination of the "Anything that I created" and "Email Archives" reasoning, but with a sprinkle of offline organization stirred in. The folders where drafts, revisions, quotes, and everything else can be found sorted by job are handy to have, to say the least. Having kept my marked up copy of the EM 385-1-1 in PDF with all of my notes, book marks, and everything else would have kept me, yesterday, from having pull out this freaking giant book (I'll try to attach a picture later) and look stuff up like it's 1836. And god forbid I need my noted FAR Clause book (which I will, because even though I'm not actively working for any DoD Contractor -- that stuff STILL comes up ALL THE FREAKIN TIME!).
• Libraries: Granted, I'll recollect all of my comics, anime, and music as I remember and want them, but some things, such as my 40+ GB of music which came courtesy of two local DJs (combined libraries to accrue that much), will never be fully recalled or rebuilt. To which, one might say "well no loss, if you can't ever recall it, you weren't likely to use it anyway" and while there is truth in that statement, for the purposes of online streaming, more is more.
• Pictures: Assuming the person/place/thing captured in the photo is still around (not deceased, torn down, or broken), you can likely take another picture. But the sentimentality and nostalgia of the originals - should those mean anything to you - are gone. Additionally, any photographs of/with your significant other or family carry a sort of "personal historical significance" that can't be so easily replaced. And obviously, any pictures of people or places that are simply no longer around can't be replaced. I don't want to seem like some sort of overly sensitive or sentimental guy, by any means: I don't take a lot of photos or videos, but those that I do I squirrel away and catalog because they are important to me. Tangible memories of places I might (or simply can't) ever go again, people who matter(ed, assuming the past) to me, and events that I want to withstand the erosion of time better than my Alzheimer's-Destined mind (although right around the point that my mind can no longer divide my real past from the surplus amounts of comic book and video game BS that it stores in memory -- my old man ramblings are going to become pretty freakin awesome). I'm noting significant, when you look at the big picture. Hell, I probably don't even show up as a blip in the medium picture -- but I would like to preserve as much of my so-called "legacy" as I can, if for no reason beyond my own nostalgia later in life. I don't assume myself so important as to post my every waking moment on facebook or some image blog - but ultimately I'd like a record of who I am, so that if one day, my children or grandchildren should wonder who I was, they can know for themselves.
...Sorry to get all sagey there... Kind of rambled. Summary: Back stuff up!Statistics: Posted by James — Sun Aug 04, 2013 10:18 am
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