While we talk about vacations lets discuss what "Backup", "Recovery", and "Off-Site Storage" mean.

A Backup is a spare copy of things you have on your computer. Not the programs that came with the PC, you have all that on CD, just the things you've created like letters, spreadsheets, photos, and the like.

Niagara Falls is beautiful, Hard Rock Cafe is alnost in the Casino, and the Whirlpool is one of the top rated Golf Courses in Canada. Weekends are busy because New York comes there to play. Be careful where you book your stay, lots of "interesting" workers up there.

Recovery is getting those things back if something bad happens to your PC. This you can do with your backup. The trick is to make backups often enough to satisfy your needs. Maybe you've read email and surfed the Internet for a while and don't have anything you need to backup. Maybe you've spent alot of time working on something important and do. Its your call.

Yellowstone National Park, getting there is half the fun. The Badlands, Deadwood, Pipestone, and driving through the mountains is unforgetable.

Off-Site Storage is putting your backup somewhere other than where the PC is. Take the backup from the office home, and from home to the office.

An all-inclusive stay in Mexico's Riviera Maya is nice. You can't give blood for a year because of Malaria, but its nice. The pyramids are one of the new Wonders of the World.

Sometimes your home is your office so here's a little something you can kick around when you're going on vacation and leaving your PC home alone.

1) Pick up an inexpensive Flash Drive at your local mega-store while you're shopping for flip-flops and sunscreen. They're about as big as your thumb, the computer sales force (look for a boy with dyed hair and a pierced face) will help you, and the one labeled 2GB should be just fine.

2) Copy things you care about (backup) from your PC to the Flash Drive. Quicken, Contacts, Documents and the like, those things that would be hard to recreate. Just plug it in and you're ready to start.

3) Mail it to yourself from the Post Office when you go there to stop your mail delivery. It'll be there, at the Post Office (off-site storage), safe and sound with all your bills when you come home.

There, should anything happen you have your stuff and can copy it (recovery) to another PC.

Of course, you could carry the little flash thingy on your keychain like the kids do, and look like a dork. But thats your call, and that's Cocktail Talk.