Not Burger King

I’m more of a McDonald’s kind of guy, though I have ventured into Burger King more than once in my life. And yesterday, we got a Whopper without even leaving the house. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the kind you eat, it was a whopper of a thunderstorm.

It was late in the afternoon, and I was busy working on my next Tinder Street book when I started hearing thunder rumbling off of the distance. No surprise there, it’s a daily event this time of year in Florida. I looked at the weather app on my phone and saw the front moving in, but as I’ve said several times before, they usually pass us right on by. Not this time.

The thunder got louder, lightning was flashing all around, and the rain started coming down so hard that when I looked out my office door, the house right across the street was difficult to see. While all of this was going on, the electric kept flickering on and off. It made me glad I have uninterruptable power supply (UPS) battery backups with surge protectors connected to both of our televisions, and to my computer. I was able to continue working without any problems.

For our televisions, we have AmazonBasics Standby UPS 400VA 255W Surge Protectors. They have six outlets, and our TVs and cable boxes are plugged into them.

I need more than that for my office, so I have a Tripp Lite 1500VA 900W UPS Battery Back Up there. My computer, screen, laser printer, and internet router are all plugged into it. Even when the power goes out, it keeps everything working for 30 minutes or more, long enough to give me time to save what I am doing and close everything down.

I also back up religiously while I am working. Microsoft Word is set up to back up every five minutes, and I also back files up to Dropbox online, as well as to a Seagate 2TB external hard drive.

Manuscripts I am currently working on are also backed up to a USB flash drive at the end of every session. Someone told me a while back that this is probably overkill, and they may be right. But before I started taking these precautions I lost hours and in two cases days, of work. I don’t plan to do that again. A little bit of effort and a few dollars spent can prevent losing a lot of valuable data.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an RV camping journal donated by Barbara House. Barbara makes several variations of these, and they all have pages where you can list the date, weather, where you traveled to and from that day, beginning and ending mileage, campground information including amenities at RV sites, a place for a campground rating, room to record activities, people met along the way, reminders of places to see and things to do the next time you’re in the area, and a page for notes for each day. To enter, click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening.

Thought For The Day – I snooped in my girlfriend’s underwear drawer and found a French maid outfit, a nurse’s uniform, and a policewoman’s uniform. I broke up with her, because if a woman can’t hold a job she’s not right for me.