I know I already used this photo but it was so appropriate and I didn’t have time to come up with something new. That said, today I took the “Things to the pool. I know, yesterday biking, today the pool, just call me Julie-Cruise-Director! The pool we go to is great, it’s a wave pool, and has a waterslide, a “lazy river”, and a tot tub. The “Things always have a great time and today was no exception. I was hucking ThingTwo and having her do full 360’s in the air before splashdown, with a constant chant of “AGAIN, AGAIN!”. Another proud moment there. This pool is equipped with Family Changerooms. As a Father with two girls, this has to be the most impressive feature of the facility in my eyes. Closed door changerooms with an adjoining private shower. That alone makes it worth the price of admission. The ‘Things are exuberant children, they love a good “Echo” and those rooms ring. I’m sure everyone can hear everything you say in those rooms. Getting the ‘Things showered, dried and dressed is like one of those really complicated ballroom dances that I tried to learn for my wedding. It takes lots of practice. I have to say I’m quite good at it now, unlike the ballroom dancing. But of course, just when you think you can relax, they throw in added difficulty, you know, just for fun.Keep Reading....

Tags: Pain, Self Preservation, Kids, Contact Sport

Last Thursday I had my worst computer nightmare come true. My computer froze, my hard-drive chirped and said a soft farewell. There was no Dylan Thomas- esque raging against the dying of the light, there was however Rage Against The Machine - esque “WAKE UP”. Just a couple of chirps and “see ya, wouldn’t want to be ya!” This has happened before, and I learned that time, you must BACK UP, regularly, in multiple places. So that time I got a nice external HD set it up and backed up. I haven’t been super busy on the computer up until about three weeks ago, whan all hell broke loose. I have done more work on the computer in the last three weeks than the last three months. Do you think I remembered to back up during the insanity, you’re thinking, yes, oh yes, he learned his lesson......well NO. I didn’t. I lost EVERYTHING I’ve done in the past three weeks, which like I said, is a lot. Sorry for all the “Type-shouting” this is still a little painful. For those of you who don’t know, I stay at home to take care of my two ShortThings full time during the days, and I run a small graphic design studio with all the spare time I have left *HA!*. I had a bunch of work come out of nowhere and was running on an avg of 3 hours sleep a night and a couple of nights with no sleep at all. Lots of work, good work,...all gone. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

This is a preventable tragedy, one that should not have happened and, due to new measures, should not happen to me again. I have a new backup system that backs up my HD hourly, daily, and weekly until it is full, and then only discards the oldest date as it needs space. It has 1TB (that’s tera-byte, oh yeaaaahhhh!!!!) of space on it. Plus I have a 500GB external which I will use as additional space and as a back up to the back up. The real pain in my ass has been reinstalling all of my software, serial numbers, fonts, settings, etc, three years worth of those. who knew that would take so long.

Don’t let this happen to you, for those of us who spend a great deal of our time in the digital realm, and make some kind of income from it, I urge you spend the money, get a system, and use it. BACK UP.

Peace OUT.

BBD.

Tags: Technology, Crash, Burn, Pain, Suffering