Waiting For Isabel

by Bob Seidel

I sit here on Monday, waiting for Isabel to make up her mind as to where to strike. Right now, all the hurricane predicting models are fairly well converged, and show the path to be east of here - hopefully by enough to prevent any severe winds in the Southport area. But I am working on storm preparations and thought it would be a good idea to pass on some thoughts. Of course, when this column comes out on Wednesday, it may be a little late. But, good ideas nevertheless if you have to evacuate.

Of course, you should back up your PC's hard drive as always (you DO perform regular backups, don't you?). Probably the easiest way to protect your PC investment (both data and investment) in case of a bad storm would be to physically just take the entire computer. It won't take much time at all to just pull out all the plugs on the back of the unit. The PC is fairly rugged and you should put in on a seat or in the trunk of the car. Just make sure they don't get bounced or moved around. The back of the pickup is probably not a good place.

I would not bother to take any of the peripheral devices. It's a lot of work to remove and pack them and they can all be replaced. I would also not take your computer monitor. CRT displays are big and bulky, and fairly fragile. LCD displays are smaller, but even more fragile. Just enclosed them in a sealed plastic bag and let nature take its course. Of course, if you have the time, room in the car, and/or inclination, please feel free to take all you want!

You should bring notes with all your account user names and passwords. Make sure you get online banking and email passwords. You may need these to log on from some other location in case you can't get back home for a while.

You should also bring your entire computer software CD collection. Many program manufacturers will not replace lost CDs or require a fairly high fee. So, if you have to reinstall the programs, you may have to purchase an entirely new copy. I keep all my CDs in two zip type music CD holders so it's easy to grab them on the run. You can also keep your latest backups in the same place if you backup on CD.

A couple of other items: I discussed the Digital Video Record from Time Warner cable the other week - well now I see that the TIVO system is also offering a DVR, so you can digitally record TV if you have a TIVO.

I continue to be amazed at how heavy-handed the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) is getting on defending against song swapping on the Internet. The latest move was to bring legal action against what I am sure is intended to be viewed as common, ordinary folks. The message was clear: they are not only going to go after the servers and software, they are going to go after the common user. I also read an interesting column over the weekend describing the small royalties that the actual artists get except in the cases of the few megastars. It seems that the middleman is making all the noise and getting all the money.

I hope we all survive the storm with minimal or no damage and we will be right back here next week.

(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport / Oak Island area. You can visit his website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail him at bsc@bobseidel.com).