Lousy

This time yesterday, dawn, I almost shut down the blog. It had been that sort of week.

Feeling lousy with the first flu since quitting smoking, I managed to delete my email Inbox folders. Please, no one ask when was the last time I backed-up, okay ?

However that was just a warm-up for the next episode: accidentally formatting a hard drive containing copious documents, images and videos from the last eight months. 

No worries now, though, as last night the mighty Magpies smashed the Cats and the Dragons found the odds right to have a go at Manly. Oh, plus I've just remembered there's now 640 bucks in an envelope from cigarette money collected every Saturday.

Thank God for footy and fags.

Comments

[badboybilly]

I also have the flu,but i had to keep going to work because we get a warning letter after 6 sickdays a year,working for the state govt dept i work for. Anyway you thought you were having a bad week, i got this off a U.K Taxi driver blog....

My fare on Walney didn't seem to want to come out and so I got out and knocked on the door. The door was opened by frail looking ould lass using a walking frame, who asked me to wait whilst she got ready to go. Ten minutes later...

(...con't at U.K TAXI DRIVER BOB)

[Esi]

Hi Adrian, were you working in the western suburbs on a Thursday, two weeks ago? I'm thinking I may have caught your cab.

[adrian]

Thanks for that Badboybilly, it's a great story, though I think he was conned.

Nah, sorry Esi, wasn't working that night.

[graboy]

I've been there with the deleting thing.

As for your emails - if you use Mozilla Thunderbird it is possible to get them back - unless of course they were on the disk you formatted.

[manly cabie]

badboybilly what dept do you work for i am also a state govt employee in my real job but we have a very strong union who tell us to ignore the letters and tell the employers to stick them up there you know whats,my aim is to leave the job with the same sick leave i started with 0 hours.why well with the state govt we have at present why would you give a shit.2.5% capped pay rise what a joke.

[Lisa]

it's ok if you have deleted things off your computer / harddrive...

you should be able to retrieve files with this:
http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/Recuva/1169571823/1

[adrian]

Thanks Graboy, I'll get onto to that this week.
Lisa, I used Datadoctor recovery software for partitioned hard drives. Unsure if I actually formatted the drive during another formatting exercise or damaged the index. No worries, I'm cooking once more.

[Sean Seefried]

Hey Adrian,

Love your blog. Sorry to hear about your data loss. I had it happen to me once and it really hurt. It's the irreplaceable stuff that hurts the most.

The problem with most backup strategies is that they require discipline. You actually have to open up a particular piece of software and click on some button to get it to back-up stuff.

Mac OS X has a great solution where you just plug-in an external drive and it will incrementally back up all your files. By incremental I mean that you can go back in time and retrieve files in the state they were at a particular point in time. So if you accidentally delete something on your main hard drive you can go back and find it. It's pretty sweet. But the best feature about it? How easy it is to use. This is my back-up procedure:

1. Plug-in my external hard drive.

That's it! As soon as I've done that it automatically detects its existence and starts the back-up in the background. In fact, if you using a desktop you don't ever have do disconnect the hard-drive so it just happens in the background without you even thinking about it. More information here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/timemachine.html

I'm guessing you're probably a Windows user so my advice seems pretty useless. I had a bit of a look around and I found a links to something which does a similar thing on Windows.

http://www.byteplant.com/products/arctor/?banner=Google

Sean

[adrian]

Thanks Sean for the considered advice. I've already ordered an external hard drive, 125GB for $99. Not sure, though, about a permanently attached hard-drive, which is vulnerable to any corruption of the PC plus the wear factor. Still haven't worked out what went wrong, but this is Vista, so... Therefore I'm happy to just plug-in the external hard drive after each session and dump fresh work, then un-plug and keep it separate for the time being.

[john]

Having been through similar experience What I did was use gmail to act as my storage for email. I just forward email from webhost to gmail account then set up outlook express or whatever you use to download from gmail and best of all gmail spam filter screens most of,if not all spam... you will never lose email again...works great for me. Good Luck

[rr]

Mate, giving up the darts! All power to you!

I gave up for a year and a half, went back, and have given up again. Man, it's hard.

I predict in a decade or less, there will be elaborate, attractive, accessible government funded self help groups, involving texts, email, and anything else you can think of, to help us beat those terrible urges.

My mum tells me to count to 60 when I really feel like a drag. It works.

My brother in law, who was a rocknroll reprobate who played bass for Bo Didley and Chuck Berry, and smoked two packs a day, tells me to look at every smoker I see and silently call them a loser (harsh, but jeez it helps).

There is no secret weapon.

But hang in there mate.

The biggest advantage in my experience is keeping way from the demon piss, and remembering how much more reliable it makes your old fella perform. Recently hooked up with a much younger lass for 8 weeks, and boy, is that true! Sadly that relationship is over. She wamted kids, I have two and have been gutted in the family court and don't want any more children, so it it is over. But a lesson learned. My fella worked like he did when he was a teenager!

And a man who avoids piss and smokes, even just until the ability to drink and not smoke emerges, sleeps the sleep of the angels.

Hang tough mate.

I know what you're going through.

Must catch up for a coffee (decaf of course!) some time.

rr.