I'll try to keep this one short today. If it gets too long it will be because I got myself all worked up into a rant about PC operating systems.

I really and truly make a habit of wringing the most possible enjoyment out of my weekends. For me, when Friday's done I set the work aside and focus on friends, family and whatever else makes for a full life (that isn't work / career related). This weekend however, while it had to do with family, didn't exactly qualify as 100% enjoyment.

This weekend my wife's PC decided she no longer needed access to her data. Whether the problem is actually a hard disk problem or something with the operating system (Windows XP), is still to be determined. When something goes wrong with her PC, lucky me, I get the call.

So you can see where a good portion of my weekend went. Whatever it is that's wrong with her PC, Windows cannot handle it. The operating system takes forever to boot, and once it does it runs incredibly slowly.

Fortunately for both of us, her machine didn't mind booting a Linux live-CD - ubuntu Edgy Eft. With an operating system running, and responsively too, I was able to access her data files and copy them off to an external USB disk. Crisis averted.

So what's the title "Investing in Peace of Mind" have to do with this? A couple of things:

1. What would we have done had we not been able to access her machine through another operating system booted from CD? Getting to know Liunx has been an investment well worth the time and effort for me based on this single incident alone.
2. You have a backup strategy for your important data, right? Fortunately, my wife's last backup had been only a week in the past. She had some very important work she didn't want to lose, so gaining access to that data was critically important. Imagine the thought of losing months' worth, or all of, your important data.

   Have a backup strategy. Things break more than you might know. But don't take my word for it. Read what Google found out in their recent paper on hard disk reliability.

There, I feel a little better. And I didn't even get all worked up over Windows.

Have a great day.