Recovering from the disk crash

More on DXpedition adventures tomorrow. Tonight, I’m just trying to recover from the disk crash in my laptop Monday afternoon.
Apple repaired my laptop in record time. The new drive was installed along with the latest OS and was as clean as the day I bought it. At first, I thought I would just restore from the latest backup, patch up other stuff as best I could, and continue as though nothing happened. Then, I thought this might be a good time to clean up a bit and only selectively restore what I really needed. (It is hard to believe the magnitude of junk that accumulates on your disk over time!)
As of this writing, I still in the middle of that exercise. Except for a couple of months of archived email, I didn’t really lose anything from this misadventure. Even so, I’ve convinced myself that I really do need to be more deliberate and careful about backups. This could have been a very messy problem.
The other thing I noticed is how all these serial numbers and registration codes are a complete pain in the neck when you’re trying to get your applications running again! If I were away from home, I’d be completely helpless if I needed, for whatever reason, to reinstall an application. Even if I had internet access, could down load the installer, and get the program reinstalled on my disk, I’d still be hosed if I couldn’t locate the stupid registration code/unlock code/magic number/please-don’t-steal-software/nobody-trusts-anybody-anymore code. {sigh}
So, along with manuals, I think I’ll collect all my stupid registration codes into a document and make sure that goes on to hammac, too. I should have done this a long time ago, but now I’m motivated. Oh, yeah, and I’m starting a backup before I go to bed, too! I’m not getting bit by this twice in one week!