The Space-Time Continuum

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I’d been fully prepared to write a post last week when I started a Time Machine backup of my Mac. As it was running, I decided to update some of my program components and settings. In honor of Daylight Saving Time, I started to mess with the date and time. Mostly it was just for fun—but in the midst of a backup, this was a bad idea. For some reason, in changing the date while backing up, Time Machine decided that my entire hard drive needed to be backed up on my external hard drive, taking some five or six hours and several programs were deleted from my Mac including both the Microsoft and Adobe suites, and a few other apps along the way.

I panicked when I arrived at school and realized that I had no access to Microsoft Word. It was at this point that I became aware just how dependent I’d become on this program in my day-to-day utilization of it at work. I felt completely Macless for nearly an entire day.

I texted a neighbor friend for help.

“You did WHAT?!” was his immediate response to my dilemma. “You destroyed the time-space continuum! You never change the date while running a backup.”

All day long I worried; I figured that in the least that I would have to reinstall an entire operating system, load up utility software and drivers, and then run updates until the cows came home; however, with the Time Machine option, with a few clicks, each of the missing programs was easily restored back to their original locations with no residual problems whatsoever.

The universe was saved and so was I. Thank goodness for the ability to ‘undo’ the butterfly effect on both time and space before it had the opportunity to do any real lasting damage.

Thank goodness for Macs.