Percival and The Lost Homepage

[percival]

Once upon a time, a university lecturer named Percival had a homepage at the department where she worked. This department did not have any backup policy in place. She lovingly tended that homepage, creating many a course web site, storing printable versions of papers, of her CV, of her dissertation, of her dissertation abstract, and some personal information there.

She never believed that this homepage would be taken down without telling her, and did not mirror the pages elsewhere. Call it blind faith, call it complacency, call it idiocy.

Little did she know ...

Last Friday, an e-mail reached her, asking for the location of her current homepage and her e-mail. Imagine her surprise and distress. She had left the department in March 2001, but surely they would have told her if they had decided to take her homepage down?

Today, she asked one of her friends at that department to enquire further. And lo and behold, her data is lost. The server on which her home directory, the one which held her web page, had been, had crashed. The data had never been backed up.

So she has to piece her academic home page back together, little by little, step by step. She has to reinvent her web presence.

She will take up the challenge.

Moral of the story: Never, ever, rely on your provider.

Comments

[soupytwist.livejournal.com]

Oh, dude. *hugs* Life really is being mean to you recently. I'm sorry.

(With any luck, though, this means some *good* luck for you is coming soon. I hope it is.)

[robertstheology.livejournal.com]

tough moral!

[spin1978.livejournal.com]

Oh no. That's truly awful. All the work...gone.

This might be entirely silly idea, but perhaps Google has cached it? I know I've dug up a few dead webpages still alive in there. Might not work if your page has been gone for like three years or more, but worth a shot regardless.

[perceval.livejournal.com]

well, I still have copies of my papers, but yeah ...

constant vigilance!

[piperx.livejournal.com]

Man, that SUX that they did it without telling you.

Good for you for taking up the challenge. You never know -- you might end up obtaining some profound insight into your future prospects as you "reinvent your web presence". Or you might just have some fun.

Piper, thinking positive

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's terrible. I'm sorry. Good luck "reinventing your web presence" :).

[sabine10.livejournal.com]

Die ganze Arbeit ..., und dass sie Dir nichts gesagt haben. Tut mir leid, das zu hören.

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

Ouch. Poor Percy. You have all my sympathy...good luck with the rebuild.

[brightfame.livejournal.com]

Man. My heart bleeds for thee. That's one of my worst nightmares ... that and the one where my computer gets struck by lightning (while my Zip-drive and Tungsten are next to it).

Hang in there! Best of luck reassembling everything.