Jul 26 2007

And That’s Why You Backup!

In one of my favorite shows, Arrested Development, there’s a bit where George Sr., the father of the Bluth family, uses a one-handed employee to teach his children invaluable (and frightening) life lessons. Example: if the kids are making too much noise in the car, George pays the guy to play a hapless pedestrian who gets hit by the car, is flung against the kids’ car window, and acts as if he has lost his hand in the accident. Of course, by this time the kids are screaming hysterically. It’s at this opportune moment the guy bellows, “AND THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T MAKE NOISE IN THE CAR!” directly at the kids and walks off. Needless to say, I found the show hilarious.

Anywho…

On Monday, Jill and I discovered that all of our web sites, including this one, were gone, kaput, nowhere to be found. On top of this, when I checked our server, I saw that all of our Mike and Jill files were gone. I spent a couple of days going back and forth w/ our webhost, 1and1, but the only responses I got were basically “we’re working on it”. They couldn’t even give me an estimate re: how long it would take to fix. A day? Two? A week? They couldn’t say. It was during this time I thought, “Hmmm, methinks it’d be good to start looking at other webhosts.” It was also during this time I thought “thank goodness I finally instituted that backup routine!” Yep, luckily I’d started backing up this entire site and database very recently, so if worse came to worse I’d be able to restore the data myself.

Luckily, it didn’t have to come down to this. 1and1 managed to get their act together and our sites came back online two days later(!) intact. However, it was still a good lesson in a very Bluth kind of way. 1and1 was my one-handed instructor, screaming, “AND THAT’S WHY YOU BACKUP!”

Thanks for the lesson, 1and1. And I’m looking for a new webhost.

By mike • by Mike, Geeky, The Kid • 2