FEMA Corps Wrap-Up Placeholder Post (And Explanation)

Hi everybody, 

So I had a fairly good FEMA Corps wrap-up post all ready to go last Wednesday or so--it was in the fashion of "Things I Have Learned In This Program" and contained great numbers of anecdotes and admonitions, both funny and serious--and then I dropped my computer three inches onto a desk while the hard drive was spinning up, which can apparently result in a drive read error for which the technical term is "catastrophic". The hard drive is toast, the computer is inoperable and the post is indisposed (and consequently indisposted). I'm going to commence shopping around for data recovery services when business hours begin today. It apparently won't be cheap--the Apple Store guy quoted me a vague price of around $200, and none of the data recovery websites I've visited have even vague guidelines for pricing on their pages, which in my book qualifies as a Bad Sign. 

Upshot is that I may get that post back, if I'm lucky. If I'm really lucky, I might get my diary and the backups for everything I've written since December, plus several months of research and notes and downloads, back as well. (I keep an external hard drive as a backup, but left it at home as a last-ditch in case my computer got stolen while in FEMA Corps. Well, I was four days from getting home and backing up the last six months of data when this happened. I guess the system sort of worked as designed, but come the fuck on, I couldn't have waited a week to accidentally break my other half?) If not, I'll probably write some sort of FEMA Corps retrospective and air it in this space. I just don't have one right this minute and I'd rather wait and see if I can get the original back before trying to reproduce it. 

So yeah. I'll probably organize all of my FEMA Corps posts from the past year into one handy compendium at some point, with links and brief descriptions to all, just to be a better reference for anyone who wants to know what Year One of FEMA Corps was like from my perspective. Also to come will be a brief primer of what to know about FC if you're thinking about joining the program, or have been accepted and want details before your adventure begins. As always, if you have any questions about the program or my experience in it, or just want to chat, email me at andy.tisdel@gmail.com and I will get back to you as quickly as life allows.

Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope it all helped.

-Andy