Well……things have been ..uh...interesting here at the Ranch. We got back from Livermore where I had a grand time flying the gorgeous WACO and a pretty little Aeronca Citabria taildragger.

The plan was to fly twice per day but the wind intervened. They don’t fly the conventionally geared aircraft if the wind is above about ten or twelve knots (especially if a crosswind is involved). So, I got to fly three mornings in a row but the afternoon flights were cancelled.

Nevertheless, getting to fly the big WACO was high point in my logbook. She’s a real lady in the sky. However, she’s quite demanding when landing. You can’t be asleep at the wheel with this bird or you’ll be harvesting weeds with the prop in a heartbeat.

A day or so after we returned, my main 500GB hard drive crashed. I’m still not sure what caused it but it may have been a defective external hard drive that I was unplugging v (not knowing that it was defective). In any case it suffered a “logical crash” (as opposed to a catastrophic failure). I couldn’t access the drive either directly or by mounting it on an external hard drive dock.

Everything had been backed up on a 3TB external drive so there should have been no problems with the recovery. However, and this is where it gets interesting, the 3TB drive failed too! GREAT! Now, I have to send the drive out to “Drive Savers” for data recovery. What is one to do when he has ten years of writing, books, articles, blogs, teachings, treatises, personal notes, studies, dumptruck loads of reference materials, thousands of drivers, hundreds of applications, tens of thousands of songs, and about 75 thousand pictures? There are a lot of very important pics of my family that I’m not ready to part with.

“Drive Savers” services start at 700 clams and worst case scenario estimates go as high as 2,700! I think I’m in the wrong business! I can’t help but think of just how fortunate that I am in that I have more than one box of bullets that I can bite.

My newly edited books simply must be salvaged.  Connie and I were almost finished with the editing and our daughter-in-law is waiting for us to ship the manuscripts to her so she can get them to “Lightning Source” printing. The crash has also led to a delay in finishing up with the new publishing company so things are on hold for a bit. *SIGH* At least we have the bar codes and ISBN numbers for them.

Now for some good news; we recently went to Torrance to see the grandkiddies. It was birthday time, in fact. Seems that their parents are feeding them and they are getting older, don’tcha know. There was lots of ice cream and goodies, of course, and a fun time was enjoyed by all.

The next morning, Mother’s Day, found us waiting in line at “Polly’s Pies” where, after only a reasonable wait, we feasted on a wonderful and large breakfast. After hugs-all-around, we departed for home via a few yard sales.

Prior to our departure from home, dear musician friend, Jackson Wallen, in Cayucos sent me a Craig’s List listing for a 12 String Martin guitar in Santa Maria. The guitar was immaculate and I have wanted a 12 string for a long time anyway. So, we headed for Santa Maria. 

Now, you would think that Ol’ Ran, would have done at least some of the math on this trip. Naw. He didn’t do that. We drove to Santa Maria and found the guy with the g-tar. It was everything that he had advertised and everything that I wanted so I bought it! He even tossed in the Martin case with it! Such a deal! Then, we headed for Torrance.

Did you know that California is a large state? I must have forgotten that fact. It is right at 200 miles from Springville to Torrance. By driving to Santa Maria and then to Torrance, it’s almost 400 miles! MAYA CERTZ!  We were bushed when we got down there. It took a few days to recuperate after we got home, believe you me.

My replacement computer is in the process of being configured. It’s running Vista and you can be assured that it will be upgraded to Win7 shortly (GAWD! I HATE Vista!). In addition to the main 320GB hard drive, it’s now running two 500GB storage volumes for a resident total of 1.32TB of storage. Not bad for someone whose first computer was a 386SX with a 16mhz processor, 2MB of RAM,  and a 180 MB hard drive. I have another 3T external storage volume and a 2T coming in the mail. I think my 1TB external drive may be OK after all. I thought that it was a goner but it appears to be healthy so far. We’ll see.

Anyhoo….I’ll try to get back into the swing of things when I can. Stay tuned for the ever changing events at Rancho Relaxo where the gophers dig deep and coyotes play and sing.