Gnaw

It’s not the name of a movie, but it does get me all excitable…and it is really sticking right now.

Looks like the March/April lions and lambs are having a tussle, and the woolly white stuff is flying everywhere.

The temperature at noon was 35.9-degrees F, and at 1349 (-8 GMT) it is 34, so the stuff might have some staying power. I’m at 256 feet (+/-18 feet) above sea level in West Seattle, WA, US.

Here are some images from earlier today…

1 2 3 4

dp

Normally, by the 23rd of March we have been frost-free for 2-3 weeks, so this is one of those 2.5% out-of-the-probability-curve kind of things…but still not without precedent.

It certainly has made my day. 

I have suddenly realized that I have the incompletable list… It has reached the point where nothing will ever be completed. Home Despot and other “home improvement” stores have created a sense of never ending home improvements and home projects. Fixing broken stuff around the house and yard is expected upkeep, but never-ending improvement is as impossible as the neo-classical economic model that assumes never ending growth based upon a limitless supply.

It is time to kick most all of my home improvement projects off the list and be happy with something that works but isn’t quite perfect. Then I can tie some fishing flies, go fishing, go hiking, spend more time with my wonderful pet rats, and all the other things that people with real lives do. I might even find some time to relax…do nothing at all. Nearly inconceivable, but I’m on my way.

That, and it is also time to donate some “stuff” and some “things” to charity. I don’t have a lot of “stuff,” but I do have more than I need. I’m done with that kind of hoarding…it begets more lists and requires that I keep track of it all. Pshaw! I want to read a book just for fun…

It was a dark and not-stormy Monday evening (03Mar08), and I was ridding myself of some databases and other content on a soon-to-be-retired domain. I selected the third, and final “Submit” button….

Did I mention that it was really late?

Did I also mention that it was really, really dark out, and night?

But not stormy…

I was logged in to the wrong account; my entire personal site disappeared from the face of savagehamsters.com. The Gallery2, the pmwiki, the WordPress install…all gone. It was truly impressive. There I was, standing in a barren field where my Web Stuff used to be. I totally nuked myself! But, not to worry because I had three, interlocking backups (months of them).

The first of the three pieces of my backup was simply ftp’d back, and that part was done. The other two were database exports…except that I had never actually _tested_ my backup plan (violation of rule #2 of my very own computer backup plan). Neither export would import under any circumstances. In fact, some of the exports were just plain wrong. It is now Thursday.

I started using Google Docs a few months ago for blog entries because it has a useful publishing feature, it allows me to work from anywhere, and all of the formatting stays intact beautifully upon publishing. As a result, only three or four entries were saved there. One of my entries is linked-to from other places, so I have to rig it to fit back into that niche. I had no plain text backup. Actually, I have no plain text backup.

Since I knew that my blog was entirely Googleable, I searched for it, found it, and selected the Cached link… Viola! There was (at least) something.

So, I ask all of you these simple questions: Is Google’s cache the only backup you have? Have you tested your backup plan?

I hadn’t, and I (of all people) certainly know better.

It will all be put back in some order or other. The dates will be correct, the entries correct, but I’m going to take my sweet time doing it. Then I’m going to test my backup(s) and see if it blows up.