Hey guys, Darc here again.

It’s been a few days and things are starting to settle back down. Thank goodness! It’s been a week and we’re in the home stretch. Godzilla (the old computer) has been replaced by Mothra (the new) and she’s humming along beautifully! The only problems have involved getting familiar to a dual monitor system and figuring out where some of the settings are. Photoshop is much faster on Mothra and much, much more stable.

The Time Machine is also working beautifully. Each hour, on the hour, it winds its way through Mothra and backs up any new or changed files.

Plans are in place to repair the Linux box upstairs. That Linux box served as a backup for the house’s computers and the server. So yes, fixing that is important as well.

The damaged drive is currently on its way to California by FedEx and should arrive this afternoon. We’ll know by Friday if the missing master copies can be recovered. If they can, we should have them back by next Friday. If not, I’ll start rebuilding page 19 of Issue 9 Friday and have it ready for you Monday.

Now, has this all been cheap? No, this hasn’t been cheap at all. It’s been quite costly, in fact. But, Matt and I believe in a few concepts when it comes to running a business. Number one is… when you make a mistake, have a misfortune happen, or basically flub-up, you pay for it and do the best you can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Yes, we did have backup measures in place. I wouldn’t have any of my files if we did not. Instead of loosing over 500 masters (I’m counting the color pages as well since those are also done at 300DPI) I’m missing only 14 B&W/Tone masters and 15 Colors. I’m also not missing any of my fonts or my tones. Our main backup fried. Our auxiliary didn’t.

We did the best we could and will continue to do so. Remember the saying, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” Despite all your planning, something may still go wrong. So when that happens, you pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and get back to it.

I’ll be honest with you, RCSI Publishing was able to front most of the cost, but it can’t handle it all right now. Matt and I have fronted the business a loan using our own personal funds. We do have a plan in place to help re-coop some of the cost. I’ll have more information on that in a bit.

So, why bother recovering the drive at all? For starters, we’ve some big projects coming down the chute in the next few months and taking the time to redraw 14 pages is not ideal right now. While we offer the comic online, we are actually a publishing business. Halting the printing of issues so I can go back and recreate 14 pages while still working on new content would be crippling, especially with our first con coming up in a few months.

But, there’s another reason. Matt and I are expanding RCSI Publishing this year, including the hosting service. The last thing either of us would want to hear if we were clients is, ’sorry, dude, the backups failed, I lost all your data, and it’s too expensive to get it back so I’m not even going to try.’ It’s not something we’d like to hear, and it’s not something we want to say. I’ll admit, I’m wary about the cost because it’s just my data. But, when it comes down to it, we’re setting a policy here. This is how we want to conduct business. We’ll do the best we can to prevent a situation like this from happening again. But, if it ever does, we want it clear we’ll also do all we can to get your files back.

Even if it means taking a hit.

I’m aware some people will think we should forgo the drive recovery. I’m also aware some people are against the fact we bought a Mac. To anyone who feels this way I’m sorry, but what it comes down to is, this is our business, not yours. We’re running it the best we can. Is it the best route to take? Only time will tell. But personally, for us, we feel it is.

I’m sorry again for the chaos of this last week. Thank you for sticking with us through this.

“The first rule of luck in business is that you should persevere in doing the right thing. Opportunities will come your way if you do.”
– Ronald Cohen