Recently, my day stood still as I waited for an important email. While I stared at my email client, silently encouraging it to report my long-awaited email, I cursed my immobility. Here I sat, stuck indoors, in front of a screen, when I could instead enjoy the good weather, sip a cold drink and read a book on my deck. How I wished for a portable tool that would notify me audibly when email arrived in my In Basket.

Over the years, I've performed many upgrades to my systems. I've moved my desktop incrementally from Slackware 3 to Slackware 12.1, refining my process as I go. While the various documents and notes in each Slackware release do help, I've evolved my own upgrade "management reporting" process that gives a clear picture of what the upgrade will and will not do.

That was cheery!

Yesterday, one of my HDs started spewing errors, and took my server's /home directory down. That wouldn't have been too bad if I had followed my own advice and had complete backups. I could have installed a new drive, and restored everything from backups. But, no, I hadn't been smart; I had no backups for the /home directory.