ID10t

Saturday morning I turned on the computer and got into some serious data entry. Going through data files I'd copied from Fillmore and weaving the records I found into my database. It was a fun run. It continued past lunch time on Saturday and I was able to get back to it Sunday evening after I set up appointments for the Brethren.

As the evening wound down and my thinking got slower in anticipation of an overnight trip to the bedroom, I was startled by the realization: I'd made all the updates over the weekend using the wrong database.

That's right.

I'd neglected to copy my current database to my hard drive on my home computer. Oh my. Goodness.

The German pronunciation is ee-dee-oat. Idiot. That's me.

A quick check found that I had added at least 250 new records to the database since Saturday morning. The "official" database had 132 records added since the last time I'd copied it to my home computer.

It was late. My head couldn't deal with the idea of correcting my sophomoric mistake. I turned the machine off and went to bed where I dreamed of someone walking through the tops of densely interconnected trees.

Monday morning I began the repair work. I copied the last 132 records from the "official database" and pasted them into the "home" copy. Then I linked each of the 132 records into the families they needed to be, comparing official to home, and making other modifications as I saw them. The process only took about an hour and a half, over all.

An odd way of re-tracing your steps. Not recommended.

Always, always, always keep your backup copies current.

It's a relief to have one complete database again.