A brief note on the recent lack of TPM postings.

I’ve gotten a lot of emails asking what’s up. Here’s the deal: As of Wednesday morning of this week I’ve been on jury duty. So, as you might imagine, that’s put a bit of a crimp in my time. Then, as of Thursday morning, the hard drive on my IBM think pad crashed. And, yes, I mean really crashed. As in, all gone.

Luckily, as I’ve ventured further into adulthood, I’ve gotten a little more responsible about backing up data. And even though I’d gotten a little sloppy, a bit lazy about it in the last month or two, I had still done a relatively recent back up – about three weeks ago.

(If you're wondering whether I'm going back to the twice a week back-up routine, well ... yes, you could say that.)

One thing I learned from this regrettable experience is that I’m simply too dependent on computers to have only one. For years, I’ve gotten by with only a laptop, which --- as those who know me could attest --- functions rather like a physical appendage. Actually, I liked only having one, very mobile, computer.

So tonight, after I got home from the courthouse, I ran out to the local mall to get a cheap desktop as a fall-back machine (for cases when my computer is off being repaired for a week) and another layer of data back-up for future technological disasters. An unexpected expense, but a necessary one --- I’m using it right now to write this post.

In any case, expect the regular schedule to resume from right now.