As some of you already know, I have begun work on the next version of this Website (yes, please be sure my ghost has plenty of pepsi). In the course of writing a script to export my blog from the current db and import it into a slightly different format, I accidentally emptied the db table. The source table. I had completely erased my entire blog. Crap.

Kevin suggested I try some things to try to recover the data, and I found some stuff online about bin logs, but sadly, i don't know what i'm doing. Nor do I actually know if my hoster gives me sufficient permissions to do it anyway.

After about 2 hours of mucking about, I decided I couldn't pull it off. I submitted a support ticket to ICDSoft's support service. Within 23 minutes of my submission, my database table had been restored.

This has shown me two things, both of which I already knew from previous experiences:

1) For the sake of pete and his dragon, pay more attention to what you're doing.

2) The support my host provides is amazing.

Well, I'm off to backup my db before I try messing with it some more.

~PS

So I've had a random encounter of the funishing kind. In our breezeway saturday night, sheri and I found a tv stand. Attached to it was a note that said 'Tom: Sorry it took me so long to drop this off. -Bill'.

I don't know who these people are, but i think Tom is going to continue to be more and more dissappointed with Bill as he wonders where his tv stand is.

~PS

This is Abby Grace. When asked about me by Ginger, she has said that I am:
A) Not scary.
B) Not weird.
C) Sam.

Apparently I am considered to be Sam because I also play guitar. I love little kids. They're so cute. Abby in particular. I'm kinda bummed now that they're going to a different church and I don't get to see them every week. We did get to see them today, however.

Today was our church picnic. Despite the dreariness of parts of the day, it was a lot of fun. Sam and I got in some good practice time, we all got to swim (in very cold water), had good food, and played a 2 hour game of Purple Ball. We are, in fact, the best Purple Ball players in East Tennessee.

The rest of this weekend has been pretty good too. Warren (boss-man) took me & Brandon out for breakfast on friday. Friday night we spent with Ginger and Tony playing mario party.

Saturday, my game (finally) continued as The Party attempted not to get themselves killed by some eel-people and discover why , how and by whom an underground town had been partially flooded. Fun and mayhem.

I've also been catching up with some out-of-state friends I haven't heard from in a while. I came across at least 3 people I hadn't emailed in ages when I imported my address book to my mac. It's been cool.

~PS

Sam & I had lunch at Shlotzky's today, and then went over to the Acoustic Coffeehouse to play some guitar out on their patio and pen in a date for us to play there.

Upon returning to Shlotzky's that we might go our own ways (we carpooled to the AC), we saw the following in the parking lot:

A silver Honda Element - quite possibly the square-est car ever designed - with a bumper sticker that read: 'You just got passed by a toaster'.

~PS

Someone named 'Kristina Hail', more specifically. I've now received three (3) phone calls for her from prospective employers over the past few months. It would seem she accidentally put my phone number on her resume. People keep wanting to interview her, but they're calling me because she gave them the wrong number. She must be pretty depressed that no place is calling her back. If only she knew.

~PS

Well, I've had my new Mac up and running for about a week now. It has now proven itself to be the best, fastest, prettiest, most efficient, most easy to use machine I have ever owned - all without a single major headache. The most 'fighting' with it I've had to do is resolve a permissions issue to get dvd's to play. This took all of about 5 minutes - 4.5 to figure out the problem, about 30 seconds to open Disk Utility and fix it.

It has been given the name Hikaru (Angelic Layer) - which roughly ranslates to 'to shine, glitter, be bright'. Ooooh. Shiny.

The ipod nano that I got with it has been given the name Sumomo (Chobits) - after a small, portable character.

The portable harddrive Kevin gave me full of stuff for the mac has been named The Pensieve (Harry Potter). Seemed appropriate.

The printer has not been named. I really don't see a need to, but this has got me thinking about names and naming things - specifically, inanimate things.

So I've got to thinking - what merits a proper name? Any inanimate facsimile of something that would ordinarily be named can (and should) be named - things like dolls and stuffed animals. But what about other things?

Now, I don't name things nearly so prolifically as some of my friends (like guitars, bookbags, cars, etc), but I do like to have something to call some of my stuff besides 'the computer', etc. I've found that I name anything that has some interactive qualities to it - hence the computer and the ipod easily merit names. The portable harddrive interacts with my computer, which insists that it have something to be called by.

This leaves (at least) one additional question: why name things? I think there are several reasons we name things. One is that its easier to call something by a name. One is that its more fun and allows us to be creative. I will submit, however, that a third reason is social. Naming an object ascribes some measure of projected personality to the object. By surrounding ourselves with objects that have names (and thus personalities) psychologically deepens the interaction between the object and the person.

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

I'm sure I would think of my computer much differently If its name was Chaznar the Impailer. Of course, the computer would be exactly the same, but the way i perceive my interaction with it would change.

As always, there's a good chance i'm thinking too much about this.

~PS

As of yesterday afternoon, i'm now officially a mac user.

Due to some supreme timing on the part of one Kevin Poorman, I was able to, for less than the price i had originally thought the computer would cost, get a 20-inch imac upgraded to 2gb of ram, an ipod nano and a canon printer plus about $280 in rebates - making the ipod free and the printer darn close. Total savings ends up around the $500 mark and i have a *sweet* machine. Yay for tax free weekends and cleverly simulated student discounts.

This will be great once i have time to set it up. As for now, its still in the box for another 12 hours since i'll be in Erwin all day.

Also, i highly recommend the Carolina Ale House in Durham if you're ever over there. The service is fantastic. We had no fewer at least 3 employees and 1 manager going out of their way to help and amuse us.

~PS

For it to be 95 degrees with a heat index of 100 after 4:30 in the afternoon is just not right.

~PS