Oh no you didn't!

Yes! I have simultaneous projects once again...

Nr. 1—blue circle on the right: a Ribby Pulli fished out of the Marination Chamber started last year (hee, I will ALWAYS be part of the UFO Resurrection KAL; I will Never Run Out of stuff to fish and finish). This is Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece in Rue CW375, a very nice soft teal. It is destined to be the short-sleeved hoodie version.

Nr. 2—purple circle on the left: an Eyelet Cardi for myself, using Rowan Wool/Cotton. I love this color, subtle and a little retro: color 54 Grand.

Both these fibers pass the Touch Test: not making my hands moist in this early autumn weather ;p

They are both wool & cotton blends and I especially like the Rowan—just a wonderful feeling to knit it. BTW: NAYY :)

They both satisfy the Simplicity Factor of being very easy knits and counter-balance the Miss Dashwood lace project. Somebody's got to ride the Bus! Make mine easy...

BUT another thing going on over here has been much more naughty.

Tuesday, as I was transferring the picture from the last post to MType, something went flooey on the bus, the computer buss, that is. We're talkin' the Info Pipeline that exists as the sum of all your Ports coming into your box: the USB, the Serial, ATAPI, Firewire, Bluetooth, DSL, etc, etc, etc...

I use a Mac Intel Mini for most of my work, souped up with 1 GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. I have an ATA buss drive and an external 150 GB USB drive for photos/video, card readers (CF & SD) and a DVD drive.

These days I think you'd call this the Usual.

Not too pretty, not too expensive, not too fancy, but it works!

Most of the time.

I'll NEVER figure out exactly what went down the other morning except the USB Hard Drive completely disappeared. Was it when I pulled out the CF card without ejecting it first (OH no you didn't)? Was it when I blindly installed the Tiger OS upgrade to 10.4.10 without reading the Read Me File (OH no you didn't)? Was it when I FORGOT TO BACK UP MOST OF MY FILES on this extra drive (OH no you REALLY didn't)!

Even though I've witnessed all over blogland the most tragic of crashes; even though I get daily emails from people telling me their horror stories; even though I profess to be a Geek Princess, I didn't pay attention.

I guess I thought that this external drive must be immune to the same Read/Write errors every drive eventually suffers from as they age. This drive is from 2003? 2004?

OMG!

What this means is hours nay days were spent trying to rescue the damn thing and figure out the collateral damage via file loss = much tearing out of hair and loss of sleep and yes, even tears.

I cried for my computer.

So pathetic! So common! So CRAPTASTIC.

And all day yesterday, I couldn't stop thinking about it while I was toiling on the DayJob. Now this drive has both USB & Firewire ports. While I was cruising along online doing recovery research, I found lots of stuff that dealt with permissions, boot block sectors, hosed directories, and more. I even created a Phantom User to force the computer to re-install all components to a new profile. No Dice. Nothing would recognize the drive or make it mount; it was invisible.

In a fit of desperation, I went into the Michigan Ave APPLE Store after work and under the huge Apple Window, bought a Firewire cable.

I went home and attached it to the Mini, and powered up the computer (no power to the drive). Then I powered up the firewired drive.

BAM!

On the desktop! Recovered! Redeemed! Oh. HALLELUJAH!

I Dance now...