I don't think I actually know what "cloud" storage is, but I am talking abut storing stuff online in some format or another. This has been hugely important for me and my sons while homeless.
In fact, it is why I started this website. I had some websites already, but they were on a paid hosting service. It was late March or early April. My hosting service was expiring in May. I had been homeless since December 31st (Happy New Year to me) and I was absolutely not going to be able to afford to pay for my hosting service.
I was getting lots of paper handouts from various services. I have health issues and I was a lot sicker at that time than I am now. Holding on to papers had lots of problems in terms of trying to keep them dry and legible. They were also making me sick.
They were also full of errors. They had inaccurate addresses or they claimed there was a meal at x place at x time and, no, there was no such meal and never had been.
So, this website started with the idea that I needed a place to keep information that I could continue to access even after I could no longer afford to pay for hosting. I wanted to start making a record of actually accurate information concerning services that I found actually useful. Because I was so sick, my memory was terrible.
But, I also typically do my taxes online and that has been enormously helpful while homeless. I keep track of to-do lists and what not via email and my sons both have accounts with Good Old Games.
We try to keep everything important to us backed up online in some form or another. Given how hard our lifestyle is on electronics, it has repeatedly saved our butts when a tablet, laptop or phone has died. We were okay because we could still access all the important stuff from any computer, even a library computer if we didn't have one for ourselves (and sometimes we didn't have a computer at all for a while).
The first time one of our tablets started getting wonky, we had to make an effort to back stuff up before it died. But this has become more of an ingrained habit. The last couple of times a tablet or laptop died with essentially no notice, the fact that there was no time to back anything was not a serious problem. We already had all the important stuff backed up.
Games from Good Old Games are not terribly expensive to begin with and you can download them to a new computer when your old one dies without having to pay any additional fee. My sons are both big into computer games and video games. We would need a separate backpack for all their games if we had to carry physical copies. For various reasons, this would absolutely not work for us.
But, with a Good Old Games account, we can just re-download the games we want to the new laptop. We lose our saved files from games in progress, but we still have access to the game itself.
For my sons, "Games are life" and all that. It also helps us stay sane while homeless to have a means to occupy ourselves when offline and confined to battery power in the evenings.
In fact, it is why I started this website. I had some websites already, but they were on a paid hosting service. It was late March or early April. My hosting service was expiring in May. I had been homeless since December 31st (Happy New Year to me) and I was absolutely not going to be able to afford to pay for my hosting service.
I was getting lots of paper handouts from various services. I have health issues and I was a lot sicker at that time than I am now. Holding on to papers had lots of problems in terms of trying to keep them dry and legible. They were also making me sick.
They were also full of errors. They had inaccurate addresses or they claimed there was a meal at x place at x time and, no, there was no such meal and never had been.
So, this website started with the idea that I needed a place to keep information that I could continue to access even after I could no longer afford to pay for hosting. I wanted to start making a record of actually accurate information concerning services that I found actually useful. Because I was so sick, my memory was terrible.
But, I also typically do my taxes online and that has been enormously helpful while homeless. I keep track of to-do lists and what not via email and my sons both have accounts with Good Old Games.
We try to keep everything important to us backed up online in some form or another. Given how hard our lifestyle is on electronics, it has repeatedly saved our butts when a tablet, laptop or phone has died. We were okay because we could still access all the important stuff from any computer, even a library computer if we didn't have one for ourselves (and sometimes we didn't have a computer at all for a while).
The first time one of our tablets started getting wonky, we had to make an effort to back stuff up before it died. But this has become more of an ingrained habit. The last couple of times a tablet or laptop died with essentially no notice, the fact that there was no time to back anything was not a serious problem. We already had all the important stuff backed up.
Games from Good Old Games are not terribly expensive to begin with and you can download them to a new computer when your old one dies without having to pay any additional fee. My sons are both big into computer games and video games. We would need a separate backpack for all their games if we had to carry physical copies. For various reasons, this would absolutely not work for us.
But, with a Good Old Games account, we can just re-download the games we want to the new laptop. We lose our saved files from games in progress, but we still have access to the game itself.
For my sons, "Games are life" and all that. It also helps us stay sane while homeless to have a means to occupy ourselves when offline and confined to battery power in the evenings.