Friday I was feeling pretty worn down and eventually I left work early, at 5pm. Saturday I had to take care of some stuff, and I’m sure it didn’t help my immune system any. Saturday and Sunday I felt like… icky ick. I called into work on Sunday night so, if needed, I give my body the rest it needed.

This morning, at 8:30am the fire alarm was going off. Not the ringing noise you would expect to hear, but the funky Start Trek siren when being targeted by the “Get out of bed boy!” aliens.  So much for sleeping in.

I threw some clothes on, deactivated the alarm in my suite and then looked around my apartment thinking, “I have no idea if this is real. If it is real, then what should I grab?”

The solution was actually pretty simple. I grabbed my backup drives. 1TB worth of my work, personal records, 3D projects, demo reel, home movies, photos… etc. This stuff is irreplaceable. It also made me realize that I need to have an off-site backup. When I was about 15 years old, I learned the hard way when my dad’s apartment burned down. In this digital age, you have no excuse for not having backups. Especially considering you can get a 500GB drive for about $100.

I have other important stuff, but most of that is pretty fireproof and (more importantly) water proof.

Good news is, on the walk down the stairwell I ran into the firefighters. They said it was a false alarm that was due to the dust from the construction on the first floor.  I went back upstairs, stripped and continued my sleep till 12:30pm.

My only regret:  I had my video camera in hand, yet wasn’t recording.  I’ve gotta make it a habit to always have it running.