Link, Sync and Backup

Link, Sync and Backup

    It's been a rather long week since the robbery, the opening of new accounts and the closing of old ones only adding to the massive password changes and trips to the Social Security office.  All of these thoughts usually come in the middle of the night as your head goes over and over what you might have missed, a swirling feeling that you may have finally covered your bases and then reading about the hack at Yahoo (an apparently admitted hack of 200 million users data, but other reports claim it might run as high as 500 million).  What's a person to do?  So after this 6-day pause of trying to staying ahead of the crooks, I finally went and purchased a new phone for about $130, not the latest and greatest but one that still had much more than my older phone both in memory and LTE capability (in other words, ready for the upcoming 5G network).  But here's where all that education comes into play for as with the Yahoo hack, it's when you think that you're prepared and did your homework that you get surprised by what you might not really know.

    So take this scenario.  Someone gets in your house and among the things taken is your computer (or for those of you without such a device, your address and phone book).  Beyond all the financial stuff that may be missing, now your years of accumulated addresses and phone numbers are also gone.  But of course, you have another copy (don't you?).  But let's say that you don't...what do you do?  This is the smart phone at its best for at this point you just reach into the "cloud" and grab back your data...or do you?  With my older phone I felt pretty darn comfortable that I had performed a linking of my contacts with Google for now I could smugly rest easy that my contacts and addresses were on both my SIM card and linked with Google; I was covered.  So imagine my surprise when I got my new phone and excitedly waited for those vanished addresses and phone numners to "sync" with my Google account and rapidly refill my new phone.  There's nothing there, the sales guy told me with a deadpan face.  Chuckling with a bit of a worried laugh I repeated that I had linked all of my contacts with my Google account (I had seen the link logo next to each contacts in my old phone); they had to be there, didn't they?  Well let's take another look, he said, sometimes it just takes a little longer to download.  So we chatted a bit and went through all of the upgrades and motions and when a bit of time had passed, tried again.  There went the circling arrows of the syncing, then they stopped..."no contacts found."  Yikes!  Addresses, phone numbers, emails...poof, gone as quickly as a passing cloud.  Should have backed them up, he said.  But I thought I did, I told him.  He pointed to the screen...no contacts found (as it turns out, I had thankfully backed them up on yet another program but not a program that could sync to my phone so it meant manually re-entering them one by one which wasn't as bad as imagined since I dropped about 20% of the now-unrecognizable and unused contacts, sort of like cleaning out your closet).  So what happened?  As it turns out, a "link" of your contacts and a "sync" to your phones is not the same as a "back up."  Huh?  Old news to those flush with computer training but news to me.  Lesson learned for as the saying goes, test, test and test (download your "cloud" material now and then just to see what is really being stored...you just might be surprised).

    Of course, I make this all sound as if my life is miserable and quite the hassle, which it isn't.  I am always aware that things could have been and are much worse for other people and that I should thank my lucky stars that "only" these small things happened to me.  And despite how it all sounds --the stolen Social Security numbers, the missing bank cards and checking accounts, the vanished house and car keys (requiring reprogramming of the electronic "fobs" so that the thief can't just click and reopen the cars and drive off...again), the couple hundred dollars in cash and gift cards-- it really is rather small, especially after watching something as dramatic as the Netflix documentary, White Helmets.  If you're not familiar with this 40-minute show, it's a group of volunteers, several thousand really.  They come from all walks of life...tailor, builder, even a former soldier.  Most all have families, either young children or spouses or brothers & sisters, or parents & grandparents.  And their job is simple...save people from a just-bombed building. 

    What is so striking about the film is your chance to not only be humbled by their compassion for everyone --for they care not a whit if the person they are digging out from the rubble is a rebel or a soldier, a child or a grandmother-- but by their determination to risk their lives to do so, over and over.  Many of these volunteers have died and in watching the film it is easy to see why.  You are witness to the power of an unexpected explosion, the severity of a cluster bomb (those devastating weapons still in use and viewable here), and the helplessness in watching others see such bombs fall into their neighborhoods, their alleys, their hospitals.  You watch such things happening and you immediately realize that all of our "problems" are for the most part, anything but.  It is time for a bit of perspective.  One white helmet volunteer talked of his days when he was a soldier, a time when he both shot and killed people only to now realize that it is better to save a soul than to take one.  And I have no idea of the power or grip of meth or crack or pink bath salts or fenanyl.  But the selfless words of that white helmet volunteer have come to make me reflect as well, for no matter how much time it takes me to get back to normal or how much hassle this thief has caused, I can only hope that he and his accomplices will come to the same conclusion, that it is not too late for them, that their lives are far from lost.  Oh, those White Helmets...350 of them have died during their rescues, but so far, they have save over 58 thousand people.