Backup with a difference

This morning our accountants asked me for a document I prepare annually for our board. It is done in two forms. Part includes an evaluation of accomplishments and challenges from the last year - that is a public document that goes to the board and to anyone else who expresses interest. The second version also includes some sensitive information including salary comparisons. For obvious reasons, that part of the document is treated as confidential. But the board needs it to comply with something in the tax code called intermediate sanctions (§4958 of the Internal Revenue Code). They take that requirement seriously, as they should, but even if they did not were they not to be able to present evidence that they considered comparable salaries when setting mine they could be personally liable for any potential "excess" benefit. For some reason I had inadvertently saved the version without the comparison on my laptop and we could not find a version of the full file.

When Apple announced TIme Capsule, I bought it because I thought it might someday be useful. It wirelessly (more importantly) and effortlessly backs up your hard disk - so you can go back to a specific date and retrieve earlier versions of a document. I did that tonight - effortlessly. In one search, I found the value of the device. All I can say is WOW!