Sorry to be so absent today. It was not intended — in fact, I had a long day of getting lots of work done (including lots of posting) planned. But my computer has been running reallly slowllly lately, and it had been getting worse, and frequent reboots were not helping, and this morning, the slowdown was just ridiculous. The Mac OS truly is remarkably resilient and almost maintenance-free — not just in comparison with Windows but also with earlier versions of the Mac OS — and yet, it seemed I had finally run into a wall after about two and a half years of nearly nonstop usage of my current MacBook Pro. So I did some Googling, got some advice, and starting doing a little virtual housecleaning.
It all took a lot longer than I imagined it would. Fortunately, however, none of this was an emergency situation: no hard-drive failures, no loss of data. I have been really good about keeping regular backups, so my maintenance work was made easier by that, because it meant I was in a better position to scour my system, secure in the knowledge that if anything untoward happened along the way, I wouldn’t be in big trouble.
So, overall, today was an annoying detour, but nothing tragic. And hopefully it’s a detour that will get me on the path of doing more regular maintenance work so that I don’t end up losing another whole day again… not to mention putting an end to all those Pinwheel of Death moments that add up to lost productivity in the interim. I feel sort of cleansed, and a little bit self-righteous for not having waited for a disaster before getting my virtual self into shape.
Can you say the same? How diligent are you about backing up your data and doing other essential maintenance on your computer?
We’ll wait for you while you go run that backup now…
(If you have a suggestion for a QOTD/QOTW, feel free to email me. Responses to this QOTW sent by email will be ignored; please post your responses here.)
