MAGGI PICAYUNE

What is traditionally the “shortest day of the year” oddly coincided with the end-of-the-world bullshit. How nice.

One upside with living in Central Texas is that the gap between sunrise and sundown doesn’t get too radical like Alaska or Sweden. Hell, I don’t know how I coped with the extended darkness in Wisconsin and Illinois. I never got to experience the Sun going down after 9 PM in North Dakota. I need to ask Cindy what time it did set during Summers. Probably not too late, our area was in the Mountain Time Zone.

I used to wonder as a kid in the Midwest, how can it be so damned cold if this is the day we’re closest to the Sun? Distance has less effect than the Earth’s tilt which affects how much energy our hemisphere receives on a daily basis.

Had to throw in a little trivial stuff to get in shape for the upcoming Geek Bowl VII.

Today I achieved this running milestone for 2012 alone. It also puts this year’s distance 144% over 2011 which was a mere 246 miles.

If I can maintain my health and determination, I think I could close out 2012 with 635 miles for the entire year.

In light of recent events: Somara’s surgery which led to her having less time and work, my ongoing fight with bronchitis (theoretically) and the server’s $1700 recovery bill…most will be receiving just a card from us, probably under the wire too.

Despite being an Atheist, I enjoy the gift-giving part of the holiday season (Christmas isn’t the only one, there’s Hanukkah, Kwanza, Winter Solstice and others) and all civilizations like to have a celebration at the end or beginning of the year. I personally prefer New Year’s Eve/Day since it has grown to become a time to reflect on things, not drink until you puke. When the change came is a story for another day.

Back to the gift giving. Being a DINK couple, we enjoy giving toys and games to the many children in our lives. Be they relatives (eight), close friends’ kids (about a dozen) and other people who we generally like (over two dozen there). For the adults, Somara started a tradition of making a cookie/candy plate. The recent surgery and recovery trampled over the window to complete this rather herculean task. Trust me, Somara needs a couple assistants to pull this off with less stress.

We do plan to return to form with a vengeance next year since we know the world will not be ending this Friday as per the misinterpretations of Mayan calendars.

Before I wrap this up, we did take in one charity case impulsively as we were leaving Olive Garden. The restaurant had a giving tree for these kids who are in foster care or they’re orphans, likely the former due to orphanages being institutions you only see in old-timey movies. Many requests were filled with odd things for tweeners: an Axe body-spray kit, Ulta gift cards, Nike-brand socks (I guess they give you Lance Armstrong’s denial ability for a decade). Somara and I were touched by a 15-year-old’s wish: a Science Fiction book and an Ike & Tina CD. Who am I to deny a young man the joy of physical music in an age of impersonal downloads! My buddy Chip immediately had a solid two-disc compilation put on hold for me, published this year too! Seems promising. Buying him the Sci-Fi book was harder due to our tastes/opinions varying wildly on what is good. The nearby Barnes & Nobles didn’t help neither because Fantasy, Graphic Novels (aka expensive comic books) and Licensed Schlock is mixed into the population. I readily admit to not being “up” on contemporary, hot, now authors. As I’ve aged, I find myself consuming less of the genre anyway. I still love Sci-Fi yet I spend more time reading more factual stuff (Argo is on the agenda along with Subversives), opinion pieces (Record Collecting for Girls and I Love Rock n’ Rock, Except When I Hate It) and socio-political stuff (Idiot America). Thus, I voted for a standard or intro-level book. Damned if I could think of one which might not be taken away from the kid for “excessive” sex and/or violence. There goes Niven and Heinlein. I thought Dune but that’s more of a space opera with boring political issues. Somara is the opposite. She listed off a slew. My response to her was like what I often hear from others who claim there hasn’t been any good music after 1985, just not as backwards. I readily admit to the shortcomings there. I figured the point was to give him a starter kit, in this Internet Age, he could find other, similar authors. We also have very differing opinions about Sci-Fi. I’m not going state anything about Somara’s, this would come off as negative and bashing. I will go out on a limb and say this in my defense. Good Sci-Fi emphasizes the human experience, condition, reaction, interaction, wonder, exploration, emotion, etc. These are the stories which have endured for decades regardless of their medium. The same applies to the licensed materials with Star Trek, Star Wars and Babylon 5. I see too much Sci-Fi as pseudo Military History being passed off as entertaining if the selection at B&N is an accurate sample. The young man came out ahead. We compromised. Somara picked a book she liked. I chose another close to my heart, Octavia Butler’s Kindred (I want to include a note with it to assure him, it’s not about sparkly, wimpy vampires, it’s a time-travel story) and an HG Wells collection in the discount bin. At least it’s a hardback plus all the heavy hitters are present: The Time Machine, War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man and The Island of Dr. Moreau plus Food of the Gods and First Men in the Moon. At least all have been made into movies once…I didn’t say good movies though.

Thanks for your understanding. We look forward to any cards and we hope you get a kick out of this year’s selections.

I think the pictures of R2-D2 illustrate the process and how badly the original hard drive was damaged. Meanwhile, I’m still piecing together other parts of the server’s data we utitlize: calendars, the wiki, the music stream and maybe something else I’ve forgotten.

Next up…getting the missing stories into place while juggling new stuff at the same time!

Thanks for your patience and support.

I had my final discussion with DriveSavers today. The data they retrieved is on its way home, over 99%. If they were as successful as they claim, then Picayune should be back to its original up-and-running state over the upcoming weekend. Either way, I’m out $1700.

A tech on Friday afternoon almost gave me a heart attack when he started listing what data he did see. I had to insist he had the wrong drive because there’s nobody on my server named Lily. We agreed on the size but not the vendor. Good thing I was correct. The guy called back to apologize and say he had the wrong one yet the key areas remained pretty damaged.

Anyway, I hope to get everything back into place as per the successful experiments I executed last week. First, I will try an outright restoration from the hard drive I sent them right after I make a copy of it. Should it fail which Jeremy thinks it will, then I will go with the rsync tricks I was pleased with.

I want to thank any who bothered to stop by. I have compiled a spreadsheet of stories I missed out on during the down time, practically a month! Will I write them? Yes, I think I will. I sincerely enjoy doing this despite the tiny, insignificant amount of responses I receive. According to my last count, it’s about 30 stories, reviews and photos.

Fingers crossed everybody as this could put everything back on track to a million words and 500 comments.