Back to school college parties bring out more than just friends.

Back to school college parties bring out more than just friends.

So my daughter went packing off to college for her third year. Seems that last weekend, they had a back to school party at their apartment and lo and behold some “friend” of a friend walked off with her laptop computer.

Man, how I wish that I had remembered to warn her about some of those things that we adults take for granted. Like when you have a party you will not know everyone attending and hide the jewelry and take the wad of cash off the kitchen counter top.

Expensive lesson.

Expensive for me and very expensive for her.

She not only lost her laptop but she lost everything on it. Three years of photos, writing and memories. Few 19 year old kids backup their computers on a regular basis.

She is a writer and those files (3 years worth) are gone as is gone the book she was working on.

Better, smarter parenting (guidance) on my part and we would only be dealing with the loss of a piece of hardware.

Another poor parenting choice on my part not to have either given her an external hard drive or a subscription to a web based backup and recovery service.

Expensive for the both of us.

She is now dealing with not only replacing the hardware but dealing with the feelings of betrayal, violation and loss that any of us would feel in being burglarized.

I guess the moral in today’s blog is to remind your kids about security in their own abodes as well as reminding them (or enabling them) to back up files on a computer—lessons learned the hard way are usually ingrained but expensive lessons indeed.

So off to computer store and to check out web based backup service providers.

…happy parenting…