Computer is back

I got my desk top back from apple this week. I also got the internal hard drive. I am going to get to take that to a data recovery services. Fortunately there are some in town. It will cost some money, but now that I have a working desktop computer, I'm not in much of a hurry. Whatever is still on there isn't going anywhere. I probably need to up my RAM. Not sure if that will actually ever happen.

Miss me?

Here are some observations I've made on the computer and data recovery issue.

1. This week I went to the funeral for the husband of one of my students. He was 32 and died from a heart attack. He was a great guy I didn't know well enough. He had a two year old and his wife is due with the second child in Sept. My data loss was instantly put in perspective, and it is effectively nothing. For those of you who do, prayer is appreciated.

2. While getting the machine set up again (installing dropbox, firefox, accessing websites and getting into my accounts, moving what data I have back onto the machine, etc.) I was reminded of all the stuff I have lost. It's a bunch.

3. There is something remarkably cathartic about having a completely empty machine. Much of what was on the old hard drive was junk I had collected over the years. I didn't delete it because I had no need to. I had a terabyte hard drive and I was only using about 250 gb. So much of it was pointless, meaningless junk I had no need (or even real desire) for. Much of it will not be missed. In many cases, I am glad it is gone.

4. I still want the photos and videos. There are numerous photos from Jojo's first month or two I don't have copies of other than on that hard drive. As useless and worthless so much of the information on that hard drive is, the only thing I really want is those photos, and I am willing to spent money and save useless crap to get them back.

Pre-crawl Son-day

Well, the drama of recovering data off my hard drive continues. If you ever fall into this situation and need Apple to replace your hard drive but give you the old one, here's some advice. They will tell you they can't do that. Ask to talk to the next person up the chain of command. They can do it, it just causes them some problems. Explain your situation and they will do the right thing.

We are corporate tech-support, not monsters. 

While the idea of losing about the first two months of photos of Jojo and a few other hard-to-replace or unable-to-replace files is absolutely killing me, I recognize it is just stuff. Stuff is not the end of the world. I still have faith and I can get the majority of it back. This really is the biggest stressor in my life right now and, honestly, that pretty much means I live a charmed life.

Jojo gave me a great "take some perspective moment" this afternoon. I put him down after he ate and look what he did.

Pretty cool right? Make a bunch of my "problems" seem a lot less important.

Recovery Son-day

Today is all about recovery in several ways. 

First, recovering from shock. We took Jojo to the doctor for a check up. He's fine. Sadly, we are losing our doctor. She got another job and won't be able to see us anymore. It's sad because she is just a wonderful doctor and her staff is great too. :(

But, Jojo is HUGE. He is in the 60th percentile for weight (18.17 lbs or so). Nothing special there really, average. But on length (when does it become height?) he is in the 99th percentile. Which I think means he is 99 times larger than other babies his age. 

Stormtrooper represents normal-sized baby

Seriously though, I'm glad he is doing well. I have no idea why he is getting so long/tall. We have a few people in our extended family who are tall (Mo and I are wee-folk). I think it is just a growth spurt. 

Second, my parents moved out of the apartment on Friday and we did more moving into the new apartment yesterday. For the most part we focused on the heavy stuff, in the hot July afternoon. As you can imagine, we were pretty exhausted by the end of it. That and sore. 

My folks new apartment is alright. It's near an apartment complex we used to live in. The area is not great, and neither is the apartment. They are old and in dire need of...well, rebuilding honestly. But, as a temporary place it will do. I think they wanted to get out of our place and get one of the storage units empty and work on getting into a nicer place near their schools. I'd like to see that happen, but next time, it's going to be a moving company. I'm too old for this. 

You own how many chairs? Why do you have a couch?

So I am resting and recovering today. I slept in, Jojo is being very nice to me and let me sleep a good bit. 

The next recovery is my hard drive. I normally do a fairly decent job of backing up data. At work, I always work of an external drive because I never trust work computers. I usually keep backups of just damn near everything on off-line or on-line backup. 

It's become so easy to backup data I really have no idea why lost data ever happens. It really shouldn't. Which is why I am so embarrassed that I simply never backed up my iMac. I know better, I failed to do better. 

Ah, crap. 

I'm in the process of trying to recover data. I bought an external backup drive, setting that up now. Got some software designed to recover data from crashed drives. Sadly, it's a bit more than the "quick start" can handle so I will be on the phone with support tomorrow. I chatted with them on Friday and they seemed hopeful. When I open disc utility, it recognizes a drive it there, but won't it won't mount. Apparently, that's better than many cases. So, hopeful. 

Funny stories: The "genius" (I hate that title) at the apple store told me he's been working there 2 years "helping" (I was there 2 hours and I didn't see one person 'helped' in the strictest sense - mostly they were told 'sorry') people with crashed hard drives and such. He made his first backup on his computer 2 weeks ago. 

One of my computer-literate buddies told me, after I told him about my crash, he checked his backup. It was a year old. 

The guy at Best Buy told me he consulted with one person who had over 100 GB in his trash can. He never emptied it. He just assumed it was gone when you put it in there. Another customer used his trash can as a desktop file. Just stored stuff in there. 

So, hilarious as it is, remember to set up your backup drives, don't be digital hoarders, and back up your data.