On FTP, delete, and things that go ‘bang’ in the night

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Or, it pays to go to bed early. Last night I was helping Ron set up our new ad server software. Add my Mac, my FTP utility, the Delete button, and “bang”, suddenly things just disappeared.

Rocket Surgery

I’m learning. Setting up and running a web site is an experience, but it’s not rocket science. We’ve been running our own ad server for years with seldom a hiccup.

Then there was last night.

It was simple enough. Upload the latest software using Transmit FTP. I’ve done it before. What could go wrong? Remember Murphy’s Law?

If there’s more than one possible outcome of a job or task, and one of those outcomes will result in disaster or an undesirable consequence, then somebody will do it that way.

More commonly, ‘whatever can go wrong, will.’ Or, ‘anything that can possibly go wrong, will.’ It did.

Brain Science

Whenever making major changes to software, whether on your Mac or otherwise, it pays to back up files, right. I did. Twice. And promptly put the backed up database file in a directory on our remote ad server, you know, for safekeeping. Then I forgot about it.

For awhile. It’s funny how things work in the universe. Things come back to haunt you when you least expect it to happen.

I never had a slice of bread, Particularly large and wide, That did not fall upon the floor, And always on the buttered side.

I set up the new ad server software using Safari, added a new database, installed the new software, got it configured. All was going well. I asked Ron to check my work. Check. It worked.

The idea was to set up the new ad server, then, one by one, transfer the ads from the old ad server to the new one. Smart, huh? Along the way, I decided to clean out some old files cluttering up a few directories, and get rid of a few older databases.

I like things clean and neat and tidy and in order. Mostly.

It is an experience common to all men to find that, on any special occasion, such as the production of a magical effect for the first time in public, everything that can go wrong will go wrong. Whether we must attribute this to the malignity of matter or to the total depravity of inanimate things, whether the exciting cause is hurry, worry, or what not, the fact remains.

Uh huh. I hear that.

Big Bang Theory

You know how much fun it is to point and click on your Mac? Delete is one of the functions attached to point and click, and I deleted, deleted, and deleted again, all the while thinking about how clean and neat and tidy I was.

It wasn’t just one delete too many. It was two deletes too many.

Bang. About an hour later I noticed that my web site didn’t have any ads. Instead, there were big blank spots. I checked NoodleMac. Ditto. No ads. Mac360 had some blanks, too. Uh oh.

The ads? They were gone. All of them. Dozens of them. Dozens and dozens of them. Gone. I had deleted the original files, and the database, and the back up database during my cleaning and neatness and tidying frenzy.

Bang. Gone. And while it happened I was happy about what I was doing.

The Lesson

Back up your files. Back them up again. And, maybe, just for fun, just to see if you can really do it in your sleep, back up those files again. Put them somewhere where the sun doesn’t shine.

Then, do it again.

Why? Because you can. And should. Why not? Because, Murphy’s Law rules.

After four or five or six (I lost count) hours that bridged one day to the next, I got everything back nearly the way it was before I had started my house cleaning chores. The Delete key is not your friend.