Technological Frustrations

Although I have experienced much frustration over the past few months (both personal and professional)...I have to say that I have learned some very important lessons. First...let me share with you what is happening with our company.

We will be doing our first "Live" training workshop on September 29th at the Sheraton in Pasadena. I am very excited about this as we will finally be adding a more personal touch to everything. I think it's important for you all to be able to put a face to the name...This is the first training of many to come so I hope you all can make it. Now onto the rest of what has been happening...

The frustration has come once again in the form of technology. I have had the second computer 'crash' on me resulting in 1000's of $'s of information and data lost to the unrelenting cyber-gods. I can't even begin to calculate what the odds are of having a 2nd computer crash like this...especially a fairly new one. Although the first one didn't technically crash...Information 'mysteriously disappeared from my desk top and 'certain' folders. It does do a little to whet my conspiracy minded appetite (since I have also been coincidentally been doing some research for a book within that realm...to be discussed later).

Nonetheless...there are very important lessons here to be heeded. As appraisers...you all should know that you are responsible to keep your work files for a minimum of 5 years. Had I not been paranoid about the OREA coming out of my closet at night...the losses I experienced could have been much more costly. Luckily...I store all my job files offline through WinTotal's Vault. This has been of tremendous value not only in keeping my jobs/work files...but in giving me some peace of mind.

The 'crashing' of a computer is similar to a business experiencing a fire and having many of their records wiped out. I can't stress enough how important it is to have multiple back-ups of your data. I think that every appraiser should have offline 3rd party storage...and 2 external hard drives with ALL of your data (professional and personal) stored.

You should use your 3rd party storage for the following: All jobs...frequently used documents (try Google Docs)...and other important but not critically sensitive files. What I mean by critically sensitive files are files that contain sensitive personal data (ss#, credit card #'s, etc.). Keep those things for your external hard drives. Not to worry...we only store those offline and nothing of a sensitive nature was lost.

Your external hard drives should contain everything from the 3rd party storage, your sensitive data, and your entire hard drives. I recommend that you make back ups of your hard drives once a day on both external drives (I as of now am implementing this into my systems).

You should keep one hard drive near your computer for convenience...but not connected to it to avoid anyone hacking it (Trust me...if it's hooked up, they can get to it). The second drive you should keep locked in a FIRE SAFE all day except when you copy your hard drive once a day...And you do this in case of a fire, big brother, or that pesky Bin Laden character. That way...if you lose everything due to some unforeseen circumstance...you won't be left copying and pasting ASHES together.

So...in closing, hopefully my lesson will help save some of you a tremendous amount of time, money, and heart ache.