My computer's screen is misbehaving. At the moment it's stable, but it's been flickering violently, and there is an ominous little dark spot in the corner. I am afraid this means that the screen is fixing to burn out. And since, on a late-model laptop, getting the screen fixed/replaced is typically more expense than the machine is worth, my poor baby may be on its last legs.

(Notice how when the computer is just running slowly, I personify it as a demoniacally-influenced willfully disruptive slave that refuses to do its mistress's bidding out of pure spite, but when I think it may actually be in danger of quitting on me, it's my poor baby.)

So I'm scrambling around getting files backed up to my thumb drive, since all good advice aside I have not been doing that regularly -- primary because I haven't been producing much of anything worth backing up for several months. That, and with the rising global dominance of Google, a lot of my content lives on the web rather than on my personal hard drive -- my blog is on blogger (Google), my e-mail is on Gmail (Google), my links are on del.icio.us (not Google yet -- as far as I know). Which, when it comes to Important Work, is not good enough reason not to back all up on other media, but when it comes to everyday applications becomes an excuse for complacency.

My last two computers have been ever so generous as to give me fair warning before they crashed into irretrievable oblivion. Not quite accurate -- neither of them, ultimately, did crash into oblivion, although they came near enough to make my heart do funny tricks. The point is, I had an opportunity to back up data from misbehaving machines. Which most people don't.

So, word to the wise: back up your stuff while you have the chance.