Ah floppies. I once wrote some of my honours thesis* then ejected and pocketed the disk in my lab coat and went and demonstrated a lab. When I returned the disk was corrupt. But, i had a backup.
During my PhD I had three sets of floppies in plastic boxes. One working copy, one backup copy which went home with me and one which sat at home and came in once a week for updating. So even if work and home were demolished in an earthquake (this was NZ, possible) while I was cycling home I would still have a copy to fire up, somewhere.
*We were the first year to get to write ours on computer. Original Macs, we weren't allowed to use the departmental LISA. My PhD thesis broke new ground: double sided printing and colour laser printed photos, even the grayscale electron micrographs. The machine was huge and sat in the basement of the Registry building. They even let me drive it when they had to go off to a meeting. The cost saving in special A4 photo paper was huge. My honours thesis had photos stuck on paper and labelled with Letraset. So were the PhD originals (I still have them) but then copied and printed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
