Patrick O'Keefe

Ok, so… check this:

My PC has been running great. And it was running great today. But, I decided to go out with the family today and I was gone for 3 hours. It was working great right before I left and while I was gone, presumably went into a sleep mode. So, I get back and I move the mouse to take it out of sleep mode. What does the screen say with white text on a black screen? Something like…

So, I’m like… what? I try rebooting, I try cutting the power and rebooting. I try unplugging my backup HD. I check the DVD and CD-RW drives to make sure there is nothing in them. I check the boot order. I try the repair area from my Windows XP Pro disc and “dir” finds nothing in the C drive. I’ve checked to make sure it was plugged in and it appears to be. I’ve checked a fair bit of other things to.

I was reasonably happy I recently started backing up files. Except… it appears my backup system was configured incorrectly because it was only downloading files that had been updated and deleted the first backup that had all of files in it. Great. Freaking LOVELY. I’m dying right now. I’ve rather someone beat me up or something, seriously. So, I talked with Jared and Brandon for a while and everything that had me try resulted in nothing, unfortunately. I hope to talk with Brandon tonight/tomorrow as he said that either way he doesn’t see how I should have to pay a grand to get my files back. So, I’m hoping he can help me.

The hard drive is still under warrenty from HP, so if I can get my files… I can work from my laptop and lead a happy life once again. I’d give someone a few hundred dollars right now to just get all of my files, honestly. Losing files is simply not an option.

Which brings me to the worst case scenario. I called Ontrack to get a quote. It’ll be $1,000 to $2,600 and it will depend on how hard it is and they can’t tell me how hard it will be until they look at it which they charge a nonrefundable $100 for (included in the prices I just mentioned). That is a lot of money. Jared recommended them as being the best and I want it done right and quickly. Including mailing, I can expect it back in 10 days from them at the most. I imagine they’ll be able to recover them all, otherwise they wouldn’t be the best. Still, that’s a lot of money. Unfortunately, I’m willing to pay it. Right now, I have nothing to do but to work around it from my laptop with the files that did get backed up that I do have. Man, why couldn’t my backups have actually worked? Well, what’s done is done… now my focus is getting my files and getting back to work as soon as possible (I’ll still be working, a lot of my files are things I NEED but don’t need now, like photos). So, any suggestions for that would be great…

Sigh.

I’m a big Bad Boy fan, as has been noted. They used to have this pop girl group called Dream (yeah, I know – even so, I actually liked some of their music). They were to release a second album – but it never came out. Oddly enough, it’s popped up at the French Virgin Records site, even though it was never released. In my ever present quest to collect every bit of music that Bad Boy releases, this would be a neat thing to pick up, since it is supposedly very rare – just for the sake of being a fan and collecting it all. It can only be downloaded. The thing is… they need to have a credit card from someone not in the US. France, Canada… etc. I’d be glad to pay for it, of course, if someone was able to buy it and then use my e-mail to send the confirmation to and/or send me the link/login details to download it myself. Anyone? :)

CameraBlast.com has launched. As opposed to my previous camera shop, which focused on a specific brand and had to be shut down, this one sells all brands of digital cameras and digital camera accessories.

Hello,

As I am sure you are aware, our country is now dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. This has and will affect many, many people. There is a lot of work to be done and people that need to be helped. In line with this, I wanted to put out a call to the users of this site to donate money to the charity of your choosing, if you are so inclined. If you don’t know what charity to donate to, donate to the American Red Cross. Instapundit.com has a list of charities, as well. Please feel free to use the comments section of this entry to recommend a charity.

Thank you for reading.

Let’s say there is a great cause that pretty much any sane person would support. It’s an urgent cause, in many ways. And most people have done certain things to support it. You see a person who has done some things for it through their website, but not quite enough for your personal liking. You’d like them to run ads here, ad links here on their own website. Would you use your users as a threat? i.e. post something to your users telling this person to do this or that or else – you’ll sick your users on them? Would you?

I wouldn’t.

I need this guy.

Via Todd Bishop.

Since the previous design contest elicited 0 entries – I have beefed up the prize package and posted it at SitePoint. check it out.