In the cloud.

I want to tell you a story of my friend. Let's call her Alice. Alice was a university student and she had a lovely laptop with all of her work (and life!) on it. As most of the students, Alice loved drinking coffee, because it helped her stay awake (and meet deadlines!).

One day night, when one of her most important assignments was due and she was in the fifth stage of procrastination, a disaster has happened! She spilled her sweet coffee on her laptop...

She wished there was an "undo button" in real life. Not that Alice was a clumsy girl. No. Things happen. I know another girl who flushed her phone down the toilet, but that is another story.

Well, anyways. After all panic, drying and disassembling apart her keyboard, her computer still did not wish to boot properly... Shift key was stuck.

MacBook Pro keyboard

It was after midnight when she remembered about her assignment. OMG! It was due 8am in the morning! No access to the file, her teaching assistants (to be fair too all students) would not give her an extension, her course grade is ruined, her career is ruined, her life is ruined...

Well, no. Thankfully, Alice was an up-to-date girl. All her work (and life!) was in the cloud! So, she grabbed her tablet, accessed her file on Dropbox, finished her work and even submitted a couple of hours before the deadline (!).

Three lessons learned:

  1. Use cloud computing (i.e. Dropbox, iCloud, Google Drive, Box.net, Microsoft Skydrive...)
  2. Use a keyboard cover
  3. Do not procrastinate... You will anyways, I know.

PS: Apple does not cover water damages, but it is still very useful!