I knew better.

That’s what kills me. I knew I should always backup all of my work on the webcomic.

Today, my computer got a nasty virus. I mean nasty. My good friend, Kevin – who fixes computers for a living – couldn’t get rid of the sucker. He took my stillborn fetus of a computer home tonight to do some major surgery on it. He was kind enough to help me figure out how to make tomorrow’s post (12/31) using my little netbook. Thank god I had a spare computer!

But I knew I should be backing up my work. Backing up on CD’s, on an external hard drive, on a online service like DropBox. I planned to plunk down some Christmas dough on such things but I waited too long and paid the price. Unless Kevin can salvage my work, I got a world of work to redo . I draw the strips on paper so I didn’t lose them but I’ll still have to scan them in again so I have all the TIFF files for print plus a lot of other little things.

So, to all you other webcartoonists: Back up your work. I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir on this one but it can’t be stressed enough. Back it up to several sources. Leave nothing to chance. And for god sakes, don’t surf the web on your work computer. Buy yourself a second computer to play around on. Let your work computer be a sanctuary, a ship that sails to as few ports as possible.

In closing, I just want to thank my good friend, Kevin, who bailed me out of a jam. I wouldn’t be able to post a strip tonight if it weren’t for him.