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  #19  
Old May 10, 2003, 01:49 PM
John David Bradshaw
 
Posts: n/a
Default Back up! This is no joke...

> P.S. When is this honorary member of the 50
> plus newsletter going to get his next issue?
> I don't think I have for a little while.

Erik,

I published two issues in April. I have one in the mill, almost done...
I had intended on getting it out this week. I sent out
an issue of Business eProducts Review on Tuesday, May 6,
and planned to send "Making Money Online After 50" out on Thursday.

Well, Thursday morning I received notice that my list-serve service
had been shut down due to a spam complaint against another user.
So while they are moving everything to another server,
I have no access to my mailing service or list.

And this outage occurred the very day I had contracted
with Frank Garon to send me some of his "Guaranteed Visitors".
They estimated 48 hours before restoration of service.
And hopefully, no loss of data. We'll see.

It took me until Friday afternoon to get another autoresponder
set up to capture the "guaranteed visitors" until my list service is back up.
I have no idea how many subs I may have lost during this time.

This whole experience brings up several major points:

1. Make sure you have a backup of any list you have built-(I did)

2. Keep copies of your current autoresponder messages-
(I had forgotten to copy the 'latest version'of my welcome message...
I had updated it online and failed to download a copy...my bad.)

3. Have a backup plan in place ready to go-(I didn't)
It took me several hours Friday to set up the new autoresponder,
modify my webpages with new email forms, and check everything
to make sure it worked. At least next time (I pray it doesn't
happen again) I can be back online ready to go by just uploading
the backup webpages that access the backup A/R.

Now let me 'back up' and answer your question.

The next issue will be out by the 15th. If I don't have
my list-serve back by then, I'll have do do everything
manually, but I will if I have to.

So Erik, thanks for asking about this old man's newsletter. HA!

Talking about back-ups reminded me of a joke I heard
a long time ago. It goes something like this...

A new hire was being interviewed by the trucking company's manager.
He presented Joe (the new guy) with this scenario...

Joe, suppose you are driving down a two lane road and you come up
behind another semi that is going very slow due to the heavy load
he is hauling.

You decide to pass him so you pull out around him into the lane
beside him. You accelerate to get around him.

As you get up even with his truck, you see another vehicle
coming toward you.

There's no time to speed up any more to get around the other truck.

There is no emergency lane.

Traffic is backed up behind the other truck so you can't drop back.

You have no place to go. What would you do?

Joe thinks for a minute, and responds, "I'd wake up Ralph."

The manager, somewhat puzzled, looks at Joe and says, "Who's Ralph?!"

Joe responds, "Well, sir, Ralph's my back-up driver...
and he ain't never seen a wreck like this'n before!"

*g*

JDB
--
John David Bradshaw - The After50 Online Marketing Coach(TM)
Teaching old dogs new tricks...that make money online!
http://www.makingmoneyonlineafter50.com


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