I had 811 visitors today!

Blather Rinse Repeat had a lot of people stop by on Flag Day.

I also realized that my blog will turn two years old in about a week or so.

Quietly reminiscing…….I remember what it was like before people could blog. When I was your age, I had call people on big metal dial telephones to tell the world my sometimes completely meaningless viewpoints. Now I can inflict my opinion on several hundred people a day with one blog post.

I am also old enough to remember when it was YEARS between Paris Hilton updates….and when DUIs were considered dangerously illegal instead of career moves.

5 Words That I Think Are Lots Of Fun To Say

1) Ubiquitous

2) Goyim

3) Curmudgeon

4) Pickle

5) Apotropaic

5 Foods I Really (Really) Like

1) Breaded Pork Chops – served with applesauce & a baked potato.

2) Coconut Cream Pie – with toasted coconut on top.

3) BBQ Pork Ribs – Oooh, baby.

4) Coffee – a decent cup of coffee. Not that stuff that sits around for hours in convenience stores. Dunkin Donuts Original Blend is great. Their mail order French Vanilla is even better.

5) Rocky Road Ice Cream

5 skills to master in life

1) Balance – Everything in the universe works towards maintaining equilibrium. Things also tend to be dynamic, rather than static. Equilibrium can be reached, but it’s not a permanent destination. Being able to find out what it takes for you to reach equilibrium with everything is the way to go. Hint: sometimes all it takes is having the right perspective to see the way towards equilibrium.

2) Learning – This doesn’t mean institutions to obtain degrees. It’s the willingness to be open to new ideas and incorporate old ones. Once again, it’s a journey – not a destination.

2) Energy Management – If you think of all the influences in your life as energy, it becomes clearer on how to manage them. The main example of energy most people probably think of is electricity. It is a force. You can’t see it, but you can see what it can do for you. It can be used to run everything from reading lights to running machines. However, if you don’t handle it properly; it can kill or injure you.  Energy cannot be created or destroyed. It simply changes forms. This even applies to personal energy. Holding onto anger, pain, fear and a whole range of other negative emotions is normal & takes energy. However,  not ultimately letting them go at some point can lead to problems.

4) Nurturing – Being able to expend energy to take care of someone else can help build a sense of empathy (an important trait to have) toward others.  It’s very natural, perhaps even genetic. However, it should not be a permanent state (see: balance). Living to serve only others is not healthy. You want to be able to see the whole picture of how everything works together, which includes each of us. We all have a part in the universe.

5) Discernment – Being able to see patterns and tell things apart is important. It applies to not only being able to recognize things in new situations, but also to be able to see the different levels of interaction. People have their own agendas. Some are obvious. Some are not. Being aware that you aren’t being manipulated or tricked can be an important skill too.

5 life experiences that ultimately helped me understand parenting

1)  Having college roommates who didn’t pick up after themselves. Clothing left all over the floors. Dirty dishes left in the sink. Toilet occasionally flushed. Looking back, it’s all strangely prophetic. The neat thing is that my kids are way cooler than that roommate back then.

2) Being a summer camp counselor. Leading a group of kids around. Making sure everyone was accounted for at all times, dressed appropriately for the weather, fed on time and got to bed at a reasonable hour. I also had practice trying to stay on schedule. My personal time would be the few waking moments left before I fell asleep on my mattress at bedtime.

3) The week of finals at college each year. Staying up really late and making like what seemed to be important decisions between midnight and 6 a.m. Oh, eating at weird hours, too.

4) Studying a foreign language.  By learning how other languages are structured, you have a better chance of getting the context of what was said….except with the added dimensions of with mouthfuls of food or between massive sobs after skinned knees.

5) Raising puppies. Clothing and furniture gets destroyed, toys get left out and restroom boundaries are somewhat tenuous for a while. They also sit their confused while you try to explain things to them. I guess the good news is that they don’t roll their eyes.  Anyway, while I have developed a lot of patience with my children, the only dogs I ever really liked are served at baseball games with chopped onions and ketchup.

Seeing as the weather is beautiful….

…my absense from the computer will continue. I promise to make my next post stunningly informative, perhaps moving you to tears.

Or not.

 The Blather Management

I heard Charles Nelson Reilly died this week

  I don’t think anyone could fill his shoes  glasses. His work with Match Game and Hollywood Squares will be studied by comics for years.

Great News! GetDataBack for NTFS worked!

    The scan took about 36 hours to complete. Once the image was created, I was able to view (but not save the data until I purchased a license key) nearly all of my files.

     I bought the key and am now putting the data on my new hard drive. Time consuming, but many lessons learned.

     This software rocks!

The scary world of data recovery

     Well, fellow Blatherians, it seems that the research of that error messages has lead me down a dark & mysterious data recovery path. It looked like it could have been a damage or corrupted Master Boot Record. Then, references were made to make it sound like the partition had been damage. Also, there were references that the registry was damage.

     The reason I am dealing with this is because I didn’t have any recent back-ups of my data. Normally, losing data can sting but it is troublesome even more because I know better PLUS it is my first piece of advice to other computer users. Redundancy. It can make life much easier. I am not at the end of the data recovery tunnel just yet, but hope to have answers in the morning. I have found out that creating an image of your hard drive, sector by sector, on an 80 GB drive can take quite some time.

       Hopefully, I will have good news shortly.

My computer is swimming with the screensaver fishes

  Thunderstorms decided to make our main home computer go the great big Blue Screen up in the sky. Luckily, our childrens’ computer (also known as our back-up computer) allowed us e-mail and Internet access.  However, I have enough components around here that should be enough to get everything up and running again.

    Since it appears to be a missing or corrupt file, I should also be able to pull all the old data off the hard drive. Hook up the old hard drive as slave to the health hard drive as master and I will be overclockin’ with Dokken.

x0×0x0

 p.s. I am gearing up for a special surprise on my blog in the near future. Stay tuned for more info.