Booooh! ;) Happy Halloween

Happy
Halloween!!!
Moose is back Gave him or is it her? mmm will have to
check, I guess a new 120GB WD SE drive this PM and he/she is zipping along
again. Didn’t want to wait ’til the drives are back, as we won’t have our two
200 GB drives back before early next week. Data recovery did go well initially
but then didn’t yield the desired results on the first partition with our image
library. We’ll consider our options after the second partition has gone through
the same level of attention. Goes to show how quick data corruption can
happen.
Happy Halloween everybody!

Exciting news

We have made first contact with Carolyn’s distant
relatives in Finland!

This summer, during our Scandinavia trip, we
stopped in the birthplace of her grandmother trying to find more information
about the family. After researching the town’s church-records we placed a note
by the grave of a distant relative … and they emailed us today

Data Recovery & Murphy strikes III

We took the secondary drive (the one with the missing
photo library in the first partition) to a data / disaster recovery
professional. We’ll see what the results are to recover the data on the first
partition in a few days. Sounded positive since there is no hardware issue on
that drive (that we know of / suspect).

Murphy hit again btw!
Right before I took the secondary drive out for recovery; I copied recovered
files from the secondary drive’s 2nd partition to the main hard drive (so they
could use the 2nd part of that drive for storage of the first partition after
they recovered it). At 99% copy progress the computer tanked with a hard drive
click. I missed a few heartbeats. Her pc rebooted and prompted system disk error
invalid … What?!?! I could not believe it. We may have more recovery to do.
I’m checking the drive right now. It’s in operational condition with a corrupted
file allocation table. Work in progress.

As soon as I get into
windows on that machine or another computer to access that data/disk it goes
right to DVD.

Carolyn says I have to smile. Ok and enjoy this
bottle of Moet Chandon Imperial Nectar as we toast to our new life of backing up
data. She even suggested incorporating this into our decor by hanging Backup
DVDs on the wall like wallpaper. I’m not sure about that one. but anyway:
Cheers!

BACKUP YOUR FILES TODAY – Before Murphy strikes

As the song says “you don’t know what you’ve got ’til
it’s gone”.

Long story short. The entire 17GB photo library is housed
on Carolyn’s pc. Accessing a picture from my Mac was a multistep process over
the network. Solution was a shortcut to that particular drive & folder on my
finder. Worked as a breeze. Since Carolyn now uses a new machine I needed new
shortcuts. I recreate them as I did in the past, except this time in a drag
& drop error in the finder (from the column view to a new button) it WIPED
the library without a word or even a beep.

Later that evening Carolyn
sets the screensaver to pull up random pictures from the photo library and
receives a notice the folder is empty??!! A moment of disbelief seized us both.
Check, double check, triple check nothing is there. Gone without a trace. What
now?

I won’t bore you yet with the data recovery details, but wanted
to post the message about backup; because it is something we have both have
kicked ourselves about the past 18 hours. Reasons are not important. We all have
the same reasons; I’ll do it next weekend, wrong software, not organized yet,
too much data to fit on one disc, etc. etc.

The point is: do it
today and avoid the pain.

A few recent images

Our two cats seem to have adapted very well to the
apartment. They miss going outdoors, which, given our upstairs location and a
handful of loose cats and dogs in the neighborhood is not an option.

One of the their “Maine” activities is keeping an eye on the outside
world.

(click read more for more recent images)

” Moose “

It was not planned by any means, but we couldn’t help it
but adopt this poor friend. While shopping for cat food Carolyn came across a
non-functional returned computer at Sams (dead hard drive – no cds, no OS, no
drivers) with 17 inch flat panel monitor just piled in a box. Visually
everything looked in pretty much new condition, price was ok and geek is my
middle name … so we took it home and gave it a big dose of TLC. A wipe
& vacuum, added two 200GB hard drives, doubled the RAM to 1GB, swapped the
keyboard & mice for a wireless combo from Logitech and tada Moose was
(re-)born. He found a very happy home on Carolyn’s desk. Matrix is still a bit
surprised, but he’ll be OK

F

Moose= Pentium 4 2.53GHz,
1GB RAM, dual 200GB hard drives, 17 inch FP monitor, dvd, cdrw, etc.

Friday note

Have you seen the weather forecast for NE USA?
Temperatures have dropped to freezing level and it doesn’t seem to get warmer
than mid 40’s any more. Don’t worry, we keep warm, and it actually doesn’t feel
cold, just a bit chilly
(I wonder how
much longer we’ll say that)

Yesterday we had our first wet
snow. Winter is on the horizon!

(spot the
turkeys)

Trees are loosing their leaves by the truckload here while a
few states south they’re now reaching peak color.

… so from now on we may have to sharpen our winter
landscape skills

Doctors in embarrasing situations

A man comes into the ER
and yells; “My wife’s going to have her baby in the cab!” I grabbed my stuff,
rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady’s dress, and began to take off her
underwear. Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs, and I was in the
wrong one.

Dr. Mark MacDonald,
San Antonio, TX

(click read
more to continue)

First snow flurries

While we were in New Hampshire today we saw the first little
flurries of the season while it was 35-40F (2-4C) outside.
Sign that
winter looms on the horizon?

First snowball

Apple iTunes for Windows

“Hell froze over!” Finally you can bring a bit of the
Apple spirit to your Windows machine * with iTunes for Windows. Long rumored and
anticipated, but it’s here for free: Free download of iTunes 4.1 !

What does iTunes do?
Official overview
iTunes is the digital jukebox which will convert CDs to MP3s, catalog &
categorize your music, allow you to burn mp3 cds, access the iTunes music store
where you can legitimately purchase mp3’s for a $1, sync with the iPod (portable mp3 player)
etc.
* Only downside is that Windows 2000 or XP is required :/ (Double
checked it, it won’t install on
98)
[Click
read more for announcement screenshot]

15 things …

Sent to me via email:

FIFTEEN THINGS THAT TOOK ME
OVER 50 YEARS TO LEARN
by Dave
Barry

1. Never, under any
circumstances, take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same
night.
(click read more)

New WORLD RECORD internet speed (~650MB/second)

How about transferring a full DVD movie in 7 (seven)
seconds?! Or a CDROM in 1
second?!
“more than 20,000 times faster
than a typical home broadband connection”
… Euh, can we have a
trickle of that speed too?
(previous record 6.7GB/minute last March)

Story
on CNN

Windy wet day.

So far we’ve enjoyed the very mild fall weather. Nothing
out of the ordinary. A few frosty mornings & rain showers early October but,
other than that, nice and sunny weather with 65-75F. Great for fall foliage
picture hunting
Today it’s a different story with a big weather-front
going through New England. Rain, rain, rain & wind, wind, wind. (where’s my
windsurf board!?) Unfortunately the wind is so strong (25-50 mph) that many
trees have lost a substantial amount of their beautiful coats … but, I cross
my fingers I’ll still be able to capture more of nature’s fall beauty.

Fall foliage

Leaves are finally turning here in New England!
The dark forest
is now bright with color, the set designed for the Autumn Play. (click read
more)

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Categories : Photography