Recovery is a Drag, Man

One of my hard drives began failing recently, and long story short, I had to get two new drives, have them set up as a RAID1 system. For the unitiated (I was one not long ago), RAID means Redundant Array of Independent Discs. Unfortunately, a RAID ZERO which is what I had, is definitely NOT redundant. RAID0 requires that both discs be functional in order to boot the system. It splatters data all over both discs indiscriminately. The RAID1 is a "mirror" system, meaning that all data and boot data are redundantly captured by both discs. It means I have a little less storage, but I have a safety net. If one drive fails, I can simply replace it and keep on truckin'. Theoreticallly, no data loss. We shall see. Many many techies have promised me many, many things about computers, and few of them have been correct.

I also had to replace my external hard drive because I was asked for the serial number, which is on the BOTTOM of the drive. I naively picked up the drive and turned it upside down. It gave a big KICK and died in my arms, well, in my hand. I replaced it and did a backup (as advised) every day. Well, trust me, that is NOT the easiest way to save data to put back on a hard drive. "Backups" have layers and layers and layers of folders, and the data is inside the lower layers. Not only that, but when I tried to do a "restore", the drive said "backup location not available". I tried copying the entire contents back onto my internal hard drive, and ended up with HUGE numbers of folders I could not delete. I had to re-format my hard drive AGAIN to get rid of them. Now I am simply COPYING my document folders onto the external drive. That way I can just copy them back on.

These have been expensive lessons in computers, in money, time, and emotional wear and tear. I know a lot more now. I am back online and my computer can do most things. My software woes continue. It is amazingly difficult to get everything back in its former functionality. *sigh* I hope this will be resolved soon.

The Porongurup Farm Gate

My old friend Bill sent this image of his farm gate in Australia.

Bear Naked

Although we know he needed a grooming and the groomer found four dead ticks on Bear, he seems to feel humiliated by his haircut.


I confess, I laughed when I saw him ... he is small and skinny. Poor Bear needs cheering up. It is weird calling him Bear when he looks more like Weasel.

Tick Magnet

During the past four or five days we have pulled FORTY ticks off Bear. Some were swollen ... in fact, one was in his eyebrow, and we had not seen it. Bear has thick hair poor fellow, we sympathize, as we flush the ticks down the toilet, in groups of 5-10. EEEEK!

Editor's Desk

Sometimes Santa comes early ... I got this beautiful cherry editor's desk today, and I am thrilled with it!

ISMs

The other night I was talking with someone who said he felt he is an anarchist, since he distrusts governments of all kinds. I looked up the definition of anarchism, which said that an anarchist believes there should be no governments at all.

This brought me to thinking about socialism, communism, and capitalism, much more popular ISMs in our world today ... each of them is good in some ways and not so hot in others. Each one of these, and anarchism as well, would work just fine if the human beings involved were what we currently think of as "enlightened".

Socialism: Let those who are physically and mentally capable take care of those who are not. Of course!

Capitalism: Free trade without the underlying manipulation and greed? Why not?

Communism: From each according to his capabilities, to each according to his needs. Sure!

Anarchism: No need to govern those who are emotionally mature and capable of using their inner sense of ethics to govern themselves.

I think that there is some distance to go (laughs hideously). If each of us saw ourselves as part of One BEING, any system would work perfectly well. No need for politics or religion, because All =One, which means that the Mind of the Universe operates freely in all, and the compassion and strength of That Mind permeates all actions.

737 Swan

As the 737 took flight I had this image of it as a large swan. The pentagrams are my addition. I am not sure if this is a painting in the making, or just this digital sketch, period.