Dude, Where's My Pie Safe????

As the darkness envelopes you, there seems to be a communal scream of "NOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!."

There's nothing like a power failure in the working world setting of a Cubicleville office complex to immediately clue one into which employees are diligent about backing up, and which of us are just too busy to be distracted by prudent acts like that.

This morning I was listening to one of my good friends describe the horror of losing a document that had about 3 hours of time invested in it….

Wait. I know it shocks some of you that I have friends, but I do.
Really. They're not the kind of friends who will lend me money or help me move, but I do have friends.

Anyway, my buddy's tale of lost document woe started me wondering…..
(cue the wavy edges on the perimeter of the screen.)

What if other areas of our life were impacted by power failures?

More specifically, what if our woodworking fell victim to gremlins in the grid the way our computer work sometimes does? It would lead to guild meetings and Woodcraft Coffee Pot discussions that sound more like share time at 12 step meetings…

So anyway, Tom, I spent 6 hours last Saturday morning dovetailing that new blanket chest for my Aunt Tillie when I'll be dipped if the power didn't go out. The lights were only out for about 2 minutes, but so help me Fred, when they came back on…every single dovetail I had cut that morning was gone.

There could be much more painful stories.

You know that storm that rolled through last Thursday? I lost an entire Hoosier Pie Safe. I don't know if it was how I had saved my work or what, but I didn't just lose the rails and stiles I was working on at the moment the power went out…I lost the whole project. I've been Googling like crazy trying to find out if anybody knows of a way to recover it, but it ain't looking good. It's upsetting because I not only lost all of my hours of work, I lost the lumber, the hardware, the punched tin panels. I lost everything. And to think…woodworking is supposed to be fun?!?!?!?

However, something tells me that the Festool Snobs would gloat about some kind of built in back-up protection they have, similar to the way all of you folks in the Apple/Macintosh crowd are right now wondering what the hell I am even talking about.