Here's a little picturesque display of what's been going on recently.

First, you see pictures of my computer. It's actually the server and game-machine that hosts my blog, my web server, a mysql server and a little more than that. Anyway, having installed a new motherboard [oh, this is getting close to the hard part] I had to reinstall the operating system. Well, I did have THREE backups, keep that in mind, folks. For those of you who haven't heard my laments on this matter, hang on. This is a valuable lesson in learning you can never ever have enough backups.

I reinstalled the operating system, and everything seemed to run just silky smooth, until [this is the hard part] I reconnected my two 250GB external Maxtor disks. They were found by the operating system, but when I wanted to scour their contents...I was asked whether I wanted to format them. This is a message typically displayed when one has installed a new hard disk, not old, used, since long formatted and filled ones. Well, to make a sad story concise: I lost circa 450GB of valuables. The backups? Well, two were on the two disks, and the third was on another, separate disk. I have still not been able to revive it.

Through great luck, I had saved a test CD-R I once saved an SQL backup on. From that strip of data, I've managed together the blog data from january up to june, yet two months' worth of writing is lost. Well, it's a new start! The new computer runs like nothing else. And yes, I am going to (...) back up data to DVD-R as well as spreading the data across several disks.

What a little problem. Anyway, the good part is I managed to restore circa 100GB through friends but all personal pictures, private stuff and others, are wiped and lost forever. Phraaw.

Anyway, the apartment's coming together! Last Friday, a guy came by and ground our living-room floor. As the pictures show, the floor is entirely different now. It's oiled down and is darker than before.

Tomorrow, a friend of one of Mikaela's brothers is coming by to fix the tiles in the kitchen. We're swapping the old ones (installed in the 1950's) with nice, beautiful darkish white ones from this millennium. Pictures will be posted. First up, is the matter of ripping down the old ones tomorrow night, and throwing a bunch of plaster up on the holes that are exposed today. In those holes, asbestos may wait for us. It's true. The concrete used is a kind of blue concrete, which has a bunch of asbestos-looking smeg slapped on them, to hold the tiles in place. Well, that's all coming off tomorrow. Yee-haw!