When setting file_location to nil do we still want to try this?  I think we would want to skip setting absolute_location.  When files are no longer accessible from the server machine it would make sense to set file_location to nil and absolute_location to something helpful.  As written this would work:
file_location = nil
absolute_location = 'new value'
but not this:
absolute_location = 'new value'
file_location = nil #sets absolute_location to nil