I'm a Mozy subscriber. Don't know what Mozy is? Which rock did you say you've been making your home under? Is it comfy there? Are all your photos and emails and notes about your children's cute behavior at summer camp nice and safe and secure under that rock you got there?
No? Hmm...if only there were some sort of solution...
Oh, yeah, that's right. Check out Mozy. (Yes Jen, I'm still talking to you. ;) You sign up, set up some software on your computer(s), then let it run. It'll back up your entire machine, and then set up incremental backups to take only what has changed.
If you ever suffer a catastrophic computer failure including, but not limited to, the baby pooped on the keyboard and it was liquidy like and it shorted out the motherboard, the kids let the iguana chew on the cables and are now crying over their dead iguana, you threw the computer out the window at the forth note this month from the school nurse asking you to pick up your child who has a 98.8 degree fever, your house spontaneously combusted, just like your mother always said your room would if you didn't pick up your dirty clothes once in a while, you drop it over the side during a trip down the rapids in a zodiac, or you go to take the laptop + cords somewhere, but the cord got tangled on the knob of the desk and as you stood up suddenly and moved to the left, the computer cord jerked the computer out of your hands and down in a dramatic fashion to the right, then the floor, where it lands on the corner, conveniently the same corner that the hard drive is located in. The whirring, click, clunk sound gives you your first indication that maybe something has gone wrong. [1]
At any rate, don't stay living under that rock. Go sign up for Mozy. It's a smart investment, even if you're anal like me and backup your files locally to an external hard drive. If your external hard drive fails (which mine recently did) you're toast. Or if your house goes toast, there goes your external hard drive in the wreckage.
And, you know, collect yourself some cool mommy swag [2] while you're at it. Yes, I am being paid one (1) t-shirt (tee) for this blog post. You should take into consideration the fact that anything I wrote here may be under the influence of a mom desperate to get something, anything really, for nothing. Shh, don't tell the Mozy guys that I'd do this without the promise of the free tee, okay? Our secret. Do that secret mommy shake. [3] Thanks.
[1] This last one has actually happened to me and I paid more than $800 for data recovery for all my eldest's baby pictures.
[2] I'm partial to the Mom 2.0 design, so do me a favor and order something else. Even if you're not expecting a baby, it can be our little inside joke on all your friends and family, and your surprised husband. It'd be so embarassing if we showed up at the grocery store in the same shirt otherwise. Much appreciated.
[3] Dude, stop shaking. We're all jiggling in places we shouldn't be. Maybe we need something other than a secret mommy shake. How about an eyebrow raise? Yeah, the secret mommy eyebrow raise. Good, good.