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Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Happy early Thanksgiving

Happy early Thanksgiving everyone in the US :) Things have been going okay here. Hunter's friend Jaffa will be visiting over the holiday, and I am planning on the traditional dinner thingy with my sister and her in-laws on Thursday. Other than that, I've been trying to trim down the Secondlife land some (it sucks to pay for it and not really be using it). I signed up with Facebook finally, lol, but I also haven't really been using it either :D

Talk to ya later :)

Thursday, November 13, 2008

Good news: More available than I thought

Just finished looking through the CDs last night, looks like I have all the photos and such from 1997-December 2006! So I'm just missing 2007 and the first couple of months of 2008. There's a chance some of those exist on another PC at the house, though, so I'm going to take a look before I decide that's all there is. Pretty happy about what I could find, though, over 6 GB!

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

All may not be lost :)

Well, I just got back from Nancy's house, and collected a very large amount of backup data. Granted there might not be a whole lot on CD post-2006 (when I helped her get a new PC and back up the old one), but still, wonderful to have something!

Also, I discovered her old camera, which has about 159 pictures on it, from April 2008 to when it broke. After that, she had borrowed my camera, and so technically between the two I should be able to get all the pictures from April 2008 to current! And, I just reminded myself that when we did the new PC, we copied the contents of the picture folder over to Kenneth's PC (the one he's still using) so a backup may exist there as well. Whew! Well, after I see what I have with all the backup CDs, I'll be able to check out that other PC and see if I can fill in any gaps. I certainly hope so! The pictures are the most valuable part of it all, really...

Extremely Sucky News

So, I got the power supply and put it in to Nancy's old PC, and... nothing. Looked like the fan on the CPU wasn't moving (important, since those things can burn up quick) so I replaced it, and still... nothing.

So, rather than buy a new motherboard and other hardware, I take out the three hard drives and buy a device to connect them via USB to my other PC, to take off the data. No response from any of the drives. Okay, I think, maybe this new device isn't trustworthy, and I hook up the drives directly to the PC in the music room, and... nothing :(

It turns out all three of Nancy's old hard drives were fried when the power supply blew. They would have been my last link to her, and contained all her photos and videos, emails and documents. I was really looking forward to seeing what she had been up to right before she died, and backing them up permanently. And now they are gone; a second death, in a way. I broke down after discovering this and cried the entire night. Even Hunter couldn't console me. I'm a little better about the situation, two days later, but still it just doesn't seem fair. I had hoped that data would be a link back to her, somehow, and a way to remember her and even learn something new about her and what she cared about after she was gone. Now they are gone, as well, and I feel pretty shitty about it. Can't she get a break? Please? Even after she dies, life still comes up lemons for her. It's just not fair. What's next, the house burning down?

My only hope is that she was good at creating backups, but odds are the only backups that exist were made around 2006 or so. I'm glad it's not completely lost, but I'll never know about her final moments online, or in email, or anything, and it's tough to let that go without a fight.

Technically, the data could still be available. There are data recovery services out there, but they are primarily for businesses, as they charge anywhere from $800-$5000 to get the data back. And that's per hard drive. I just don't have that kind of money unless I took out a loan, and something tells me that I shouldn't, even though I could. Because of that, I feel like I'm giving up. I mean, there's a *way* to get it back, but due to money, I can't do it.

It's frustrating, like how I felt about Samantha the cat earlier when she was having health problems: is letting something die because you can't afford it really doing "all you can do?" Is letting irreplaceable personal memories and data be lost because you can't afford to bring it back really doing "all I can do?"

Monday, November 10, 2008

A little update

Just life as usual the last week or so... It's been really nice having Hunter back; I've been feeling pretty complete lately. Now that he's back, I feel like I caught a crag on a rock face I was sliding down, and managed to start my way back upwards.

While I was out at the "celebration of life" for Nancy out in Creswell, I had tried to copy off her pictures, videos, and emails, as a memento of her. Unfortunately, the PC simply wouldn't boot after a restart. Not understanding why, I gave up at that point and visited with the other folks there for the memorial. A couple of days ago on Saturday I picked up the PC and brought it home to try and fix it. Wouldn't you know, the minute I turned it on, the power supply sputtered and popped and I shut it down fast. Tonight I'll buy a new power supply and see if I can't get it all working again. I have an ulterior motive for obtaining the pictures: One of the last projects Nancy and I talked about doing together was uploading pictures into an electronic picture frame her brother bought for their mother last Christmas. We've really been slacking on getting it done, so I want to have it completed for this Christmas, because I know it would have meant a lot to her.

Thinking about Nancy still isn't easy, especially when I read back through my blog or come across things related to her at work (which is more than half the stuff here), but day to day thoughts are not as bad. Just really miss her, is all... :)

As for upcoming plans, Hunter and I enjoyed our time so much at the yurt that we've even made another reservation for later in December. At $90 for two nights, it's a hard getaway to pass up, and we're splitting the bill and scrimping on food and other purchases until then in order to cover it.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Back from vacation!

Here's a little video I took of the yurt Hunter and I stayed at over our anniversary. We just got back yesterday. :)