jimrandomh comments on Items to Have In Case of Emergency...Maybe. - Less Wrong

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Comment author: jimrandomh 03 April 2014 07:10:17PM *  8 points [-]

Extra emphasis on the importance of backing up your computers' data. It must be automatic, it must be tested, and it must include everything by default (ie, tag things to exclude, don't tag things to include).

Filling an emergency or travel kit is mostly about finding items with high value-to-weight ratio. Some things they should definitely have are:

  • Caffeine pills or canned caffeine drinks, and modafinil. Tired driving is death. Tiredness makes every emergency worse.
  • Spare phone batteries, or batteries that can output over micro-USB. Have a system for keeping them charged and rotating them, and have enough total battery to run your phone for a week of normal use.
  • An A/C splitter: Guarantees you access to power when there are outlets but people are competing for them.
  • Earplugs.
  • A USB key or MicroSD card that's cheap enough to load up and give away.
  • Condoms. Insert Tom Lehrer's "Be Prepared" song here.
  • A notebook and pen.
Comment author: Alexei 07 April 2014 11:24:18PM 0 points [-]

Backing up data is extremely painful. I'd recommend having all the data you wanted backed up on Dropbox or Google Drive.

Comment author: jimrandomh 08 April 2014 01:24:39PM 1 point [-]

That strategy ends in deep regret, because it requires you to opt-in specific bits of data. If you ever actually need it, you will discover that something important was missed.

(Also, if backing up data is at all painful, it means you are doing it wrong.)

Comment author: luminosity 12 April 2014 02:10:46AM 1 point [-]

It depends how you do it. Some of my data is backed up via Google drive in almost as automatic a way as is possible. Add a new folder to your documents library (Windows 7+), make this folder the default save location for the library, make it the folder where google drive manages backups automatically (there is a program you download to do this). Now you just need to pick the documents folder whenever you initially save something important, and the rest is handled for you. The same would be easily doable with dropbox.

Comment author: jimrandomh 13 April 2014 02:20:53AM 0 points [-]

That strategy ends in deep regret, because it requires you to opt-in specific bits of data. If you ever actually need it, you will discover that something important was missed.

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