Planning ahead, or Obsessive-Compulsive, choose your label.

Years ago we did the yearly reports in July--as we are doing this week and last week--and the servers crashed at the corporate headquarters during an unseasonal thunderstorm.

You don't need me to tell you about the consternation, confusion and chaos that ensued.

Once bitten, twice shy. Now I print each report, though I kill many trees in the process, so that I have a hard copy for each one in case I have to re-construct the data.

No, our company does not have the kind of protected backup one would expect. And if they said they did, I would not rely on it, since a massive lightning strike or human error could easily destroy the backup as well.

Come to think of it, I also remember a subsequent year in which the backup was absent-mindedly mis-named and last year's data overwrote the current year's data, resulting in much hand-wringing and denial.

Denial is just a river in Egypt. Or France. Or wherever. I no longer entrust vital data to UPS protected servers nor to electronic backups. If I have to reconstruct the entire report, I can do it from hard copy. Long live printed paper!

I feel like a neo-Luddite.