True Story: The Cat Ate My Source

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A security issue prompted my ISP to change passwords for all users. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem - I'd go to my repository of code, divided at present by year in a "Code05," "Code06," "Code07" format and update a constant in my Constants class and *presto* the connectivity would be back.

Problem is, what if I have to go back more than 3 years?

I'm usually not that irresponsible. In fact, I'm fiendish about backing things up. Yes, I use source control, even on my own little-bitty projects that matter to no one but me. But my mistake was using an external drive - a flakey one - which died after I'd had to reformat/reinstall. I'd backed everything up to it, and my data was gone.

Edge case since I'd after the reinstall I'd moved what was important back to the machine. Edge case because it was in a "code archive" that was something like 6 years old - code that was so long forgotten it was like a head bludgeon when I got a phone call from the client saying that their site was down.

After panicking and looking for some accidental backup (why do we look for things when we know they're gone for good?) I had an epiphany.

I downloaded the *.aspx pages and the site dll - I then used Reflector to disassemble and - I kid you not - 15 minutes later the client was up and running.

And yes, I kept the source...

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