Yes - its true.  I coulda been a hero today...but wasn't.
I had every opportunity, at no risk to my person or anyone else's...yet didn't act when I had the opportunity.

Had I followed my own advice, things might be different for several people, but I didn't.

If only I had done myself what I tell other people they should always be careful to do, a lot of time and repeated effort could have been saved.  There's no excuse.

"What happened?" you may be asking.

Simple - I didn't back up my files on another computer or another method in case of a problem...and today there was a problem.  A big one:  our office was visited by a rat thief last night.  While my laptop was but one of several items stolen (and not the only computer), I want to use this opportunity to emphasize the reality to impress upon everyone the need to back up your data and keep it separate from your computer!

Not only will you save yourself time, effort and frustration - you won't waste other people's time by asking them to resend things to you that you might not be able to find in your email files online.

There are many simple ways to back up your data: hardware like external hard drives are cheap & offer a bounty of storage for the money (plus the fact that by keeping things like photos, videos & other megabyte eaters off of your main drive will allow your computer to operate faster).  Burning files to CD or DVD is super cheap & easily portable.  Online storage is becoming less expensive all the time - and offers the beauty of access anywhere, anytime, from any computer.  Flash or thumb drives allow for a lot of storage at a pretty low price...and you can even put it on your keychain (Decorate it yourself if your're a fashionista)!

Another wise idea is to get Lojack for your laptop - less than $50 a year to have a better chance at recovering your computer if it is stolen + they can delete sensitive files for you remotely.  The moment your computer goes online, those files can be gone from prying eyes.

So...please folks...don't be The Hero That Coulda Been.  Do the simple thing, the right thing & be your own hero on a daily basis:  back up your data.

Why?  So that you aren't tempted to write a "mea culpa" like TucsonKent just did.  Besides, crow doesn't taste very good (not to mention the fact that it sucks going through hundreds & thousands of emails to rebuild your data files).