Had a reporter tell me tonight that he could "make me look like a star expert" if I came up with a top 10 list for disaster recovery, in response to an email outage at the University of Michigan. Must be a slow news day.

Anyway, I am going to become a "star expert" all by myself – here are the ultimate 10 steps to better disaster recovery:

1. Bad stuff happens (like power outages, fires, and floods). Be prepared (oops, that makes the Boy Scouts the star experts).
2. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure (oops, that makes Ben Franklin the star expert).
3. Expect the unexpected (oops, that makes … I don’t know, somebody… a star expert).
4. Trust, but verify (oops, that makes Ronald Reagan a star expert).
5. Trust noone (oops, that makes Mulder a star expert and contradicts number 4, sort of).
6. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket (oops, another unknown star expert – I guess they didn’t get published either).
7. Plan for worst, hope for the best (oops, … well, you get the picture)

I think I’ll stop here. Bottom line – there is nothing hard about this, you just gotta believe (some other star) and just do it (Nike).