An ode to content lost due to automatic restarts

The day before yesterday, at office, I was in the process of writing a blogpost using Notepad. After finishing all my assigned work for the day, honest. Anyway, some unexpected work came up that kept me occupied till about 10 minutes before the 9 o'clock bus to Andheri. As anyone who has ever used the 9 pm company bus to Andheri knows, 8:50 is still good enough to board the bus and get a decent seat.As anyone who has traveled from Thane to Andheri knows, it is very important to get a decent seat. Or at least a seat. My desk, however, is at least a 5 minutes' walk away from the bus stand. The walk includes a trek up a staircase. Mid-way through what you would expect was a conventional staircase, you meet grass. You have to move to the extreme left of the step to find the remaining part of the staircase. I wouldn't be surprised if the landscape artists in their wisdom had designed this to test if we consume drinks that may inhibit our abilities to walk in a straight line. I also wouldn't be surprised if they've hooked up security cameras to capture the puzzled followed by embarassed expressions, followed by a quick look to see if anyone else saw them, on newcomers faces as they step onto grass instead of a step that takes them higher. Anyway so I had all this to worry about, so shutting down my PC was not a priority. I stuffed whatever I could see on my desk either into my bag or locker. I remembered to lock my locker. And ran. Navigated the stairs, paused, ran, paused, walked, ran and arrived gasping for breath at the bus. Phew! There was a seat. True, it was a seat between two men with shoulders and girth that did not confine themselves to the seat they were on. But it was a seat nonetheless. I smiled at my good fortune. Little did I know that Windows works in insidious ways. While I was thinking happy thoughts, Windows had decided it needed an update so it went ahead and downloaded that update. Then that update needed a restart. Next morning I came to office to find my computer, all smug and restarted. Blog post was nowhere to be found. Of course. Windows doesnt auto-save-recover lowly notepad stuff.


At work, whenever anything goes wrong, after haranguing us in very polite language, they ask us to contribute to Lessons Learnt. Something that we can take away from the incident, precautions that must be taken to ensure that the incident is not repeated.

I learnt or, rather re-learnt the following lessons from the above episode :

1) If using Notepad,Save. All it takes is a Ctrl-S about every 2 or 5 minutes, depending on your typing speed, to spare yourself the anguish.

2) Or use Word

3) Shut down PCs every night before leaving. Not only do you get to save electricity and earn bragging rights, "Of course I am doing my bit to save the earth " , but you have all your documents and potential posts. The good, bad and ugly. All of them.