I believe they're called blue berries. The little, um, “blue” berries you mentioned?

Oh.

A nap maybe? Make sure we've gotten enough sleep? We'll see. Whatever the day may bring (sun, rain, whatever) some good part of it needs to be spelled g-u-i-t-a-r.

Later. Another one of my bus rides downtown to have a cup of coffee and a cookie inside the Rotunda building (a bit chilly outside, I'd say), a walk then through the City Center (a bit chilly in the City Center as well) and on to Washington Street and beyond through Chinatown, passing through without stopping at the Asian Cultural Center.

A picture or two for no particular reason (other than the fact I do take pictures what with carrying the camera and all) heading back to catch the bus back home. And home we are.

I'll take the car to the computer shop later to see where we stand. I can't go forever without the damned thing, so best I bite the bullet and get something here up and running. Pain in the ass. We'll do our own research on the two hard drives in question, see if anyone else has had two of them simultaneously lose their partitions when booting, but I suspect we're hosed. A bad move buying them? Western Digital? Not what it once was (if it ever was)?

It's noon, no symptoms of anything unpleasant, not particularly tired, although I'll test to see if I can sleep a little later. Time today for guitar. I believe I mentioned that earlier - guitar - as our lesson is coming and we (really do, even though we don't sound like it) want to do well.

Later still. A walk to the computer store. They're going to try to reconstruct the partition on one of the two drives and, if they fail, then that's the way the ball bounces. I'll know by the end of the day.

That means getting another computer, I don't trust the components in this one anymore, although I'll be able to salvage some of the hard drives and maybe one or two of the cards (although I doubt it). Still, a valuable lesson. Now to find out how much it may have cost: when did I last do a backup? A week ago? More? (please not more - please?)

Evening. Turned on one of the old computers and attached it to the network, downloaded some forty-five patches to the XP operating system (that's how long it's been since I've last used it), connected to the external network backup drives to see how much of November I'd backed up. None. None of the files from November. Worse yet, I was short four days at the end of October, days that contained the Fruitvale Day of the Dead photographs. Ouch. We'll see that it doesn't happen again.

Oh, and they called to say they couldn't reconstruct the partition, so the drives are indeed hosed. We'll see where we go in the morning. No good comes from getting all upset, it could have been worse (losing that L.A. wedding, for example), so we'll use it as an excuse to put the entire system (computers, printers, external drives and the rest of the mess) in order. Clean up the computer corner. We've done the bedroom, now the computer room corner. Hup.

Another Maigret at six. We'll play along on the guitar and sing sad computer songs. At least it's a Maigret I haven't seen before, funky (as its plots often are) but new and tolerable. To bed early this evening.