Being a packrat sometimes has its advantages.  I was struggling with a problem today when I remembered that I’d solved almost the exact problem almost 15 years in a communications program that I wrote to automate Compuserve access.  The program was no longer on my hard drive, but it was on the backup CD I burned three years ago.  I saved myself hours of work, and more than a little embarrassment—that code holds some very hard won knowledge.