Attentive readers may have noticed that this has been a particularly bad year for me and tech. It has really seemed like every week, some piece of my daily tech gear has decided to smack me in the face. After a few months of this — including doing the iOS and OS X Yosemite beta dance — I’ve created a “go bag” of sorts to help get me back up and running regardless of my location.

Since my main MacBook Pro is a mid–2011 model and has a replaceable hard drive, not all of these recommendations may be applicable if you have a newer MacBook. What follows though, are some tools and steps I’ve taken to minimize my downtime. In the 1990s, I was a roadie and one of the first lessons you rapidly learn is that your backups should have backups, and backing up the backups is a good idea.