Backup your data!

A couple of days ago I rediscovered the importance of making backups. What happened? Well, I lost at least 20 dive profiles because I never bothered to check how many dive profiles can my dive computer (Uwatec Aladin Prime) actually store. All this time I assumed it was 99 hours but as it turns out it's only 25! Once you reach the limit, the computer gradually overwrites old data. Basically this means only the latest 25-30 dives are being stored at one time.



Luckily I was fiddling with TravelTrakCE last year, trying to get it to work on Jornada 7xx series. Back then I succeeded in transfering 25 dive profiles to the hand-held and then forgot about it. So all was not lost as I was able to recover the logbook and import it in the new one. To tell the truth, I did download the latest dives from the Aladin in May this year. However, because of my initial assumption, I formatted the laptop drive containing the data without making a copy of the logbook first! The result is a nice gap in my logbook, dives missing between September 2006 and May 2007.

It's a good thing I keep an old-fashioned paper logbook as well!

Flea Market Finds #2

Another flea market, another find. This time it's a Commodore LC5K3 calculator. It came with an original imitation leather sleeve, instruction booklet and warranty card. The calc itself is in excellent cosmetic condition. However, I did have to fix the on/off switch, the latches on the case cover were bent and the battery contacts needed a thorough scrubbing. It now works as good as new!