A graduate student at the University of Western Ontario has been a study in anger and anxiety since her laptop, which contained research for her PhD thesis, was stolen on campus last week. Charlene Weaving, a 26-year-old set to finish her kinesiology PhD in September, took a washroom break and returned to fond her Dell laptop was gone. Her final dissertation, four years of work, was gone too.
Charlene Weaving works very differently from me. Because I spent a great many hours ripping my CD collection to MP3, I was sure to back up every file to CD. Every video and picture on my PC has also been backed up to CD. Anything that matters to me and can't be easily replaced is archived on CD in case of emergency. When it comes to computers, you just never know.
How is it possible Charlene Weaving worked four years on something this important and didn't have the sense to create a back-up she would keep at home and not in her lap top bag? Heck, I would have created a new CD every week. This was an accident waiting to happen. Poor Charlene.
