As awful as “Spock’s Brain” is, the image of McCoy getting bombarded with the knowledge is the most appropriate representation of what’s happening with my site right now. The Enterprise had better luck than me since Spock was back to his usual self in a couple days…Picayune has been down since late Tuesday night when the server’s hard drive too a big dump.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time too.
- Right before the long weekend.
- During my friend’s honeymoon in Hawaii (Jeremy still has the means to take our best shot at a recovery, more on that later). If not, grab my ankles and prepare for DriveSavers, Total Recall or SRS.
- We’re still paying off Molly’s medical expenses and Somara is on medical leave.
Then again, is there ever a better time for this crap to happen? Maybe when I win the lottery…remind me.
Ideally we recover the drive’s contents in their entirety, I migrate it over to the old server (good thing I held on to it, the newer one is scrap thanks to my fat fingers and poor anti-DIY design) and I pick up where I left off 11/20/12.
The next-best hope is recovering the var directory. This is where WordPress keeps all the text and layout (aka the SQL database); the pictures, plug-ins and themes are thankfully in the open so I got them intact.
If not, I’m looking at $1500-$1700 from what I’ve read according to others who’ve ponied up the serious coinage to get their data back. I’m confident DriveSavers will succeed. The drive’s mechanical failure(s) aren’t serious yet. On-the-shelf software DiskWarrior got the majority of the drive mounted, the product just couldn’t rewrite the damaged files and during several attempts to copy it never found the invisible guts which made the OS function. There was enough to trick a computer into thinking the volume was a valid choice to restart from.
By now you’re asking, “Didn’t you back it up?” Yes and no, mostly no based upon how this is playing out. I blame myself for not scheduling a better downtime opportunity to execute my favorite, effective method. Definitely going to need a change of strategy, possibly considering a different solution. Odds favor me, thus, I will not be experiencing the schaudenfraude I’m sensing from certain people.
What will I do should every avenue is a bust? I don’t know. I’m not a quitter with Picayune, an ongoing, evolving mental exercise I’ve been doing off and on since 1990 (days like this I miss print!). I did consider saying the hell with this, nobody really bothers (feels like a message in a bottle) and I could take up other neglected hobbies, namely reading, maybe D&D. Neither can scratch the creative itch especially with the latter being plagued with the socially retarded. This leaves the alternative of being glad something caused me to jettison the past, similar to the Doctor Who reboot in 2005. Enjoy the clean break (never mind the 1500-plus stories the backup did have), take a new approach, write about other matters…
Nah! I’ll burn those bridges when I see what Jeremy’s possible cloners turn up.
Before the meltdown, Picayune was on the verge of hitting a couple landmarks I wanted to celebrate:
- I finally migrated the last set of stories and comments from the blojsom incarnation; took me four years in fits and starts. Laziness was the reason.
- I was on the verge of publishing a million words! There’s a plug-in which counts.
- As per #1, I had an accurate count on the comments and I was going to have a contest with a prize for the 500th.
Fingers crossed I succeed. Fear not, I won’t be hitting up anybody for money. I may have to surrender a chunk of my inheritance. It’s important to me. I think of the site as a clunky, messy novel I’ve been working on for seven years.
Meanwhile, this is the only post I have up. Other stories will just be written in a word-processing application until an outcome is determined. Feel free to write me via old-fashioned e-mail, I find social media to be crappy, impersonal and weak-minded…yeah, I’m guilty of using it too.