5/31/05:

• I'm hoping I can update my site again sometime soon... turns out I broke it when I FTP'd in to download the files I lost on my local computer. (What idiot decided FrontPage extensions should break when you FTP into your own site?!)
  
  Anyway, I noticed something funny - I donated $1 to Little Gamers (link) because I like their stuff and I wanted the extras they offer. I completely forgot that I still had $5 and change in my PayPal account... I'll probably go donate more then to help them get to the US for conventions. Why? Because it's something I like to do. Even when I shouldn't. ^_^
  
  Well, the point of this whole thing in the first place was to comment on something silly; PayPal's money back guarantee, or buyer's insurance - whatever they call it. Anyway, I had the option of giving up 31 cents for the 1 dollar I donated to Little Gamers (you know, in case I wasn't happy with what they provided for my money). Does this seem odd to anyone? I mean, is it 31 cents on the dollar every time you buy their insurance? If it is, I better be DAMN careful when I start EBay'ing again; it'll cost me more for insurance when I don't trust someone than it will to take a chance when I'm bidding. :P

5/24/05:

• Without bothering to read that last bit below, many of our files got recovered. I'm positive we're still missing a few random pictures, but I did so much searching across the hard drive that it seems 95% of what was lost has been found. Unfortunately for me, I lost all my saved emails and my address book, and all my calendar appointments. This will teach me to export all of this information (assuming Thunderbird and Sunbird allow this).
  
  Aside from that, my wife and I need to simply sit down and resort pictures; after everything that was recovered, of course that sorted folder wouldn't be. My life would have been too simple in that case. :p

5/17/05:

• So... I screwed something up REAL good. I finally got around to getting my wife's frankensteined computer up and running again; after 2 hard drives in there died, I decided to drop her down to the single working 4 gig drive that was in there and to remove anything that wasn't needed. This meant taking out the SCSI card.
  
  Which means the SCSI card had to go in my computer. Why? Well, how the heck else will I use my external SCSI cd-recorder? So, I put the SCSI card in my computer, and I put my radio card back in (because I don't have a real radio in the basement) and I put everything back together. As I'm plugging cables in, I plug the power cord in a bit early; not really a big deal, except that there's some freaking setting in the computer's BIOS that allowed my computer to turn on the split-second it got power. Again, not a big deal. Normally.
  
  Since something wasn't quite right (perhaps the computer got some sort of surge when the power cord was reconnected?), I ended up with a blue screen of death. This too is not usually a major issue. Reboot your computer and 99% of the time, everything is ok.
  
  This time, something f*cked up my Operation System (Win XP). I got some error about ntoskrnl.exe not found. Oh SH*T. If you aren't aware, that is probably the most important file on a computer. In general, it's the kernel. In windows xp, ntoskrnl.
  
  About this time I'm thinking "Son of a B*TCH, I don't want to reinstall XP". So, I did some searching online and found a way to restore the kernel so I could boot my computer and get back to normal. I followed these instructions I found... and got a new error. I remember this one less well than I remember the one about the kernel, but basically it was a highly ambiguous message about "dlls needed for load" and some other crap before and after. "S.O.B." is my thought again. So, I search on this error too. And I find several forum posts about what happened and what needs to be done. (Thankfully, most of those were free, f*ck off to the sites that want to charge you for the solution). Guess what needed to be done? REINSTALL WINDOWS.
  
  /sigh
  
  OK, fine. So I boot off my WinXP CD for about the 20th time that night. I noticed I don't have "Repair Installation" option, so I literally have to reinstall windows. Fine. >< So I start the process and question myself something like 3-4 times; do I really *want* to do this? (You don't have a choice dipstick). Should I tear apart my computer and throw the 12 gig drive into Cheddar's machine so I can backup first? (Naw; all these online forums say you should be fine. "My Documents" shouldn't be deleted when you reinstall).
  
  As I go along, there's this warning about the possibility of "My Documents" being deleted. This is the one folder on the computer I can't afford to lose. EVERYTHING important is saved there; Word files, Access databases, Excel spreadsheets, my tax files, my Money file (Money is a program that I use to balance my checkbook and other financial accounts). Our family pictures were in there. My websites were all in there. My entire life was in there for the most part.
  
  Not anymore... I'd estimate a good 80-90% of it is lost right now. Thanks to Cheddar, we recovered a lot of these files. Unfortunately, I'm missing some pictures. My linkshell website isn't there, as well as parts of my personal site and TFTRB (not important); thank god these 3 sites are online. All I have to do is download those to edit locally again, no big deal at all. I'm missing some Word files still, some Excel files... some useless things that I don't *need* are gone. Some useless things that I don't *need* were recovered (I would much rather have had important files ><).
  
  My bookmarks file seems to be gone; I switched to Mozilla Firefox (god I love their software right now). I haven't tried reinstalling their mail or calendar application; I think I'm going to pull the old folders that were untouched before I reinstall those. I may have saved my bookmarks had I done that with Firefox. Of those links, I really wish I had my Web Comics stuff in tact; I must have had a good 200 comics that I wanted to check out.
  
  That's about all the whining I have about this situation; I've used a pretty good program to recover most of my lost stuff; this will most likely be online AFTER I'm done with everything. If you know of any other free methods I can try to recover more of my stuff, let me know via email, IM or the forms over there <-. (The ones no one ever use).
  
  Oh, and thanks to all of this BS, the photo album will have a slight delay (big deal considering how long ago it should have been done).

05/14/05:

• The Photo Album is gone, but only temporarily. I'm moving it outside because apparently, some people are confused about how to find it or some crap. And I'm in the process of revamping the album too; no more front page with 100 (fine, 15) thumbnails leading to the same pictures you've all seen for the past 8 months. My wife and I sorted all of our pictures, grouped them and now I need to finish the photo album sub-site. I've already got the basic design worked out, so it shouldn't take too terribly long to finish and put online. Unfortunately, misfortune struck our house and in order to speed the process of putting things right, I MUST fix my wife's Frankensteined computer so she can do what she needs without having to run all over the house to do it. If you care to know what happened, call us. We'll share. Otherwise... have some dang patience and you can see your pictures soon.
• FYI: The photo-album sub-site will be at http://www.roeszler.org/album/. It's not there yet, so don't bug me about why can't I see it. Smart alec's are not welcome right now either.