My Own Organizing: Water and Other Disaster Supplies

I live in earthquake territory, where preparation for a possible quake makes all sorts of sense. But, like anyone else, my preparedness sometimes is a little lacking. However, this past week I took some good steps forward, and I'm so pleased I just had to share.

I know to stock up on water, and I'd actually done that some months ago — and then found I had no good place to put the bottles. I had some of them in my garage cabinets, but I didn't really like that answer; if a bottle sprung a leak, it could do a fair amount of damage.

So this past week I got some shelving, which fits into a little niche in my garage just perfectly. (I didn't even realize that; I had the shelves put up somewhere else, and then my neighbor noticed the better place for them.) I'm not handy at all, but these Plano shelves really were as easy as they claim; the "two minutes to assemble" claim was actually true. So now my water has a good home.

And I did one more thing. I carry an emergency kit in my car, because I may be away from home when a quake hits. But I was overdue to order replacement supplies for that kit, and I just took care of that.

Anyone going to join me in taking at least one baby step toward being better prepared for earthquakes or other natural disasters? If so, please share in the comments!

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A European Tour of First Aid Boxes

One resolution you might want to make: create (or replenish) your first aid kit. If you want ideas of what to put in the kit, I'll send you to fellow organizer Geralin Thomas. But if you want interesting boxes to use, I've got you covered.

Back in 2009, I wrote about first aid boxes and began with a box by 100drine. That version was in French, and was called la boîte à pharmacie. Now we have an English version of the same box, available from Sentou, Made in Design and Mon Joli Shop.




And here's another reprise. Back in 2009, I included a similar box, but the picture on that one wasn't full-length, and therefore didn't show the woman's lovely legs. This one is from Amadeus, and it's certainly eye-catching. It's out of stock at Jardindéco.com and Ogardeno.com, where I first found it, but you can still get it at Sylvester Oxford and Keladeco.com.




I don't know who makes this wooden pharmacie box, but you can find it at Dibor; there's also a white version. You can also find the unpainted version at The General Toy Store.




Yves Blayo at Incidence has designed a number of first aid boxes: see here, here, here and here. You can find them a number of other places, too; the photo above come from The Holding Company.




Present Time, headquartered in the Netherlands, makes this simple first aid box in two sizes; there's the smaller and the larger one. You can also find it at DIGS.




Balvi, located in Barcelona, also makes a number of first aid boxes. Yes, this one does look a lot like the Present Time box, except for the colors. Two places to buy it are C'tendance and Jardindéco.com.




Finally, if you prefer homeopathic remedies, there's a box for you, too. It comes from Derrière La Porte and is sold by Maginéa.com.

Related Post:
First Aid Boxes with Flair

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Sleep Well at Night: Have a Good Backup Strategy

Today, I didn't need my backups. I was lucky.

Last night, I took my MacBook over to Judy Shintani's studio for her Women's Do Your Own Thing Night. I pressed the power button, and my MacBook powered on - but the screen was blank. I took it home, hooked it up to my external monitor - again, nothing. So I pulled out my iPhone, made an appointment at the Apple Store, and tried not to lose too much sleep.

And today I got a new logic board installed - under warranty. But I'm lucky that the logic board was my problem, and not my hard drive, because my last backup was about a week old. OK, losing a week of data wouldn't be too horrible - but it wouldn't have been fun, either.

So the first thing I did when I returned home was to do a new backup, and recommit to doing those backups every night.

Given my experience, I smiled when the following item popped up in my Google Reader today: Yes. Another Backup Lecture.

That comes from Merlin Mann, who starts out quoting John Gruber:

Hard drives are fragile. Read as much as you can bear to about how they work, how incredibly precisely they must operate in order to cram so many bits onto such small disks. It’s a miracle to me that they work at all. Every hard drive in the world will eventually fail. Assume that yours are all on the cusp of failure at all times. It’s good to be spooked about how long your hard drives will last.

Merlin goes on to say:

- If it’s not automated, it’s not a real backup.
- If it’s not redundant, it’s not a real backup.
- If it’s not regularly rotated off-site, it’s not a real backup.

Given that guidance, I'm looking at making my reasonably-good backup strategy even better, since I fail on the "automated" part.

Lots of things can go wrong with a computer. Here's John Locke's story: "Last week, my laptop died a sudden spectacular death-by-drowning, as a full cup of coffee poured into its keyboard." You might get some warning signs that your hard drive is about to fail - but not always, even if you don't spill coffee on your machine.

Want some help coming up with a backup strategy? If you're on a Mac, you might read The No-worry Backup Plan for a good overview of your options.

Related Posts:
Don't Lose Your Computer Files: Do Your Backups
Backup Your Data - Avoid Heartache and Pain

Related Newsletter:
Lessons Relearned in the Last Weeks of 2009 (see #3)

[photo by Mac Users Guide, found on Flickr and licensed under Creative Commons]

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Disaster Preparedness of the Computer Type

Have a contingency plan and know when to activate it.

I worked in an Information Technology department for many years, and this was one of our mantras. So it's been interesting to deal with contingency planning myself over the past two days.

Here's what those past two days have looked like for me, with approximate times:

Saturday, 6 p.m.
I came home from working with a client, went to my computer, and checked e-mail - and when no messages came in, I knew something was wrong. I went to my web site - and there was no web site! Horrors! But I could browse the web just fine.

So I called the company that hosted my web site, and was told there was a significant data center problem, but everything would be fixed by midnight. I wasn't happy - that would mean almost 11 hours of downtime, since the problem had started a bit after 1 p.m. - but I went to bed confident that all would be fine in the morning.

Sunday morning, 8 a.m.
Still no e-mail, no web site. Now I was told things should be fixed by 7 p.m. The phone support person did all he could do - he acknowledged the problems this extended downtime caused for me, and gave me the best information he had - but that didn't make the downtime situation any better.

Sunday morning, 8:30-noon:
No longer trusting the estimates, and unable to accept this extended downtime, I went searching for a new hosting company that met my requirements, which include around-the-clock phone support in the U.S. Fortunately, I already had some leads that I'd noted from prior reading.

Sunday noon:
I placed my order with my new hosting company.

Sunday, early afternoon:
I did all the technical work required to get my site moved and e-mail running again. Fortunately, I understood what needed to happen, and that went pretty smoothly. There was one glitch, but having a friend test my new site uncovered that one.

Sunday, 3 p.m.
My site came back up, at least for some users. E-mail started flowing again.

Sunday, 5:00 p.m.
My new hosting company sent me a welcome message on Twitter.

Sunday, 5:15 p.m.
My original hosting company provided updated information; service was now expected to be restored by 7 a.m. on Monday.

So what did I learn from my web site hassles? Being organized for such an eventuality really helps! Here are the basics of being prepared:

1. Have a plan.
I could have saved about four hours if I knew exactly what hosting company I would move to if mine ever had a catastrophic failure. But having some leads was much better than starting from scratch.

2. Review and modify the plan.
While I'll pick a "next in line" hosting company now, I know I need to review that decision periodically; companies change, for better and worse.

3. Know when to act on the plan.
While I hadn't put my decision criteria into words, I think I made some good choices here. I made the leap when:
- I no longer trusted the information coming from my old company.
- The probable downtime from staying put was long enough that the probable downtime associated with moving seemed like the lesser of the evils.

And these same lessons apply to other areas of our lives - which can be much more important then a web site problem. For example, I've had similar issues when one of my cats got sick on a holiday weekend. Where do I go when my vet is closed? When do I decide it's time to go, rather than wait for my normal vet to be open?

We know we need plans to deal with major issues - a fire, a serious earthquake or hurricane, a medical emergency. (We may not have those plans, but we're aware of the need!) But it's easy to overlook the more mundane blips in our lives, and make sure we're reasonably ready for them, too.

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