For those of my three avid blog readers, you may have nocted a week went by without any fun pictures posted on the blog from Alex Boyce's Wedding last week. Well, to make a long story short, a full glass of red wine was spilled on my 2-month-old laptop. Lucky I always follow the rule of not deleting photos until I have at least two copies of all of them. Usually I run with 3 copies at all times- hard drive, external hard drive, and the cloud (probably a cumulus, but perhaps cirrus). All of the info on my tempranillo-flavored laptop is safe and sound, but the work I had done to the photos will be slowed a bit as I revert to my old computer to handle the job.
If I can give advice to anyone depending on technology for their business, my advice is to spend the extra money on rugged items that last. All but one of my Canon lenses are the professional models- not just because they help with better quality pictures, but because when I'm shooting a wedding and accidentally kick a lens behind me skittering it across concrete, dangerously close to an olympic-sized pool, I want to know it's going to work for the reception afterward (this actually happened). However, no matter how much you spend, these professional items do have their breaking point. I bought my laptop from Lenovo (formerly IBM) because their ThinkPads are meant to be some of the most reliable out there. You can see an example of their water-resistance here. Unfortunately for me, it was a full glass of red wine dumped all at once into a speaker, rather than a few flowing ounces of crystal clean water on the keyboard.
The lessons learned here are: 1) that you should always backup, then backup again; 2) great hardware is nothing without a great accidental coverage warranty; and 3) make sure you and your friends drink Argentinian wine from sippy cups if around your fancy pants laptop.
Here's another teaser from the Boyce wedding. More to come.
