Way up high like a bird up in the sky
Precious memories, unreliable media
My friend Jennifer just got back from her trip to Africa, Amsterdam and Paris. Upon arrival back in the US she discovered that her pictures on her camera were not accessible. Knowing how important the photographs from a once in a lifetime trip can be, I offered my assistance.
I asked her to bring the camera to the Continental Club last night so I could work my magic. Initially she thought it might just be the camera that was the problem. By this time it would not even turn on. I figured I could put the memory card in my computer and perhaps see the files and be able to pull them down to my computer.
No joy. When I plugged the card into my camera the indicator flashed that the memory was completely full but when IÂ tried to view the contents the camera reported that there were no files. Yuk!
I gave Jennifer her camera and took the disk home. When I connected the camera to my laptop and attempted to view the contents of the card what I saw was none too encouraging…
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Nothing but gibberish. The good news was that my computer could see the data, the bad news was that it looked fairly corrupted.
I have worked on regular hard drives and on floppy disks to recover data, but never on a flash memory card. I wasn’t 100% sure if I could do it on my own but I decided to give it a try.
I had recently been given a copy of Data Recovery Wizard Pro 2.0 to review and have not had the opportunity to play with it. This would be my test subject.
I installed the software and went through the steps and what do you know? I was able to recover about 95-98% of the images from the disk!
Ah, the satisfaction of overcoming adversity! I look forward to giving Jennifer the CD with the recovered files on it.
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Colored lights can hypnotize
Our instore performance at Sig’s Lagoon went very well. There is a photographer who shoots at the Continental Club and uses a lot of pro-gear. He shot our performance and sent me some of the results. I like this one the best.
He did some other cool shots in black and white and one where he left my shirt in color. You can see those in the Flying Fish Sailors gallery.
Cynthia strikes again
The bar area between the kitchen and the main living area was lacking something….BAR STOOLS!
Over the years we have casually shopped for them. You can easily spend $250-$400 a piece for nice ones at The Billiard Factory or some other specialty furniture store.
We finally decided to buy some plain ones from the unfinished furniture store down the road.
Cynthia figured she could paint them to match the color scheme and make some custom cushions.
They came out very nice!
A fond farewell
I support a LOT of users here at my company. Many local and many out in the field.
There’s some turn over, there always is in a company this size.
When a remote or field employee departs the company they have to send me their
computer gear for processing back into inventory.
One of our federal sales guys recently left and when his computer was delivered today I found a bottle of Grey Goose L’Orange Vodka with a thank you note for all the times I’ve helped him in the past.
Now I have to fend off my co-workers till I can get it home.
Wassaaaaaaaabi
As those who know me can attest, I am not lacking for many good meals in my life. I don’t measure my relationship with Cynthia in years so much as I measure it in pounds.
Besides being an awesome cook, she is also a pretty mean seamstress.
Combine that with her odd sense of humor and quirky aesthetic and the results are quite astonishing.
I live my new sushi shirt!
I call it Lounge-wear for the 21st Century….
Here’s some close-up shots to show the detail of the fabric and the buttons…
Home improvement
In our main living area of our home there is this triangular shaped section of wall above the bar. It’s pretty high up and has always been something Cynthia wanted to decorate in some fashion or another. At one time we had hung some pictures but you really can’t see them way up there. We had hunted for a larger picture but never could find anything suitable.
Years passed and Cynthia eventually decided to make a colorful quilt to hang in that spot. Over the last few months Cynthia started to put one together and completed it last week. It’s almost entirely made from fabric scraps she had laying around and I think her total cost out of pocket for the project was $8 for some dowel rods and the batting.
We were going to hang it last weekend before we discovered that the ladder we owned was not tall enough to reach the spot where the nails had to be placed to hang the darn thing.
This weekend I was able to borrow a suitable ladder and up it went. I think it looks pretty awesome.
Vegas – Evening of the second day
After a nice nap I headed down to the strip. The taxi dropped me off in front of the Paris casino.
Pretty impressive, in a cheezy Vegas sort of way. They even had a replica of the Arc D’Triumph complete with roundabout.
The “Eiffel Tower” is only half the size of the real one. They let you go to the top (for a fee).
The view is pretty nice.
The Bellagio fountain show is something to see. It is hard to capture in still photos.
Also interesting at ground level
I walked around for a bit but it wasn’t long before I decided to head back to the hotel.
The distances are greater than you might think.
The scale is what throws you.
Two casinos side by side is not like two average buildings, it’s like side by side shopping malls.