This post is proof I’m not a guru. Because a guru would never make this kind of mistake.

And if he or she did, they’d never admit it.

But I need someone to share my pain, so here goes…

About a week ago I mentioned on my blog that my laptop had to go to the shop — and while I had a loaner computer, my Article Architect database was on my backup volume and I couldn’t get to it.

Well, a few hours later I figured a way to get the database, put it on my loaner computer, and all was well with the world — I had all my stuff!

Last week I wrote several articles, I submitted several, I created a series of autoresponder emails, I started tweaking a new special report/ebook, and I created the launch plan for a new product.

All inside Article Architect. It’s the single most important piece of software I own. Everything I do is in it.

You know what’s coming, don’t you?

Today the Mac store called and said my laptop was back from Apple. So I copied everything over from my laptop to an external drive — except for my Article Architect database.

All of my stuff that I worked on last week, gone.

So why can’t I run back to the Mac store and copy it off? Because I was “thorough” and deleted my account from that computer before I took it back. Which wiped out all my files and changes. I was being “good.”

When I realized what had happened this afternoon I felt physically sick. I still can’t believe I’m going to have to recreate so much stuff.

But wait a minute…in that post last week didn’t I say I was going to look at a way to do a remote backup? So what happened with that?

(This is where it gets even worse.)

I was trying to come up with a system where the articles would “sync up” with a remote server. But doing a sync isn’t a trivial task and I realized it was something I would have to spend some time figuring out. And so I didn’t do it last week.

Tonight I dropped my son Tom off for his Civil Air Patrol meeting and took my laptop to McD’s to work…

…and in less than 55 minutes had a remote backup working in Article Architect.

In probably 45 minutes from now it will be an automatic remote backup — it will do it on whatever schedule you choose.

In less than 55 minutes I had implemented something that would have saved me a TON of grief.

In my defense, I didn’t implement a syncing strategy — it’s just a backup of the database to an online server. But it’s all 99% of people will need — including me. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

(For those wanting that feature, it will be available in v2.8 and it will be a few days before I release that so I can bang on it first.)

That’s my sad story.

I think the moral is, don’t put off today what will save your butt tomorrow. Or something like that.

In any case, I believe this will end up being Jay’s Boneheaded Move of 2009.

And that’s why I’m not a guru.