(We're about an hour and a half from either where we live now.)

The only real negatives we could see are (a) the houses are somewhat closer together than we'd like, and (b) it's a bit of a hike to go snowboarding. However, where we live now, it's about 1:15 to Hoodoo, a small regional resort. Vernonia is about 1:45 from Mt. Hood, so for an extra half hour drive, I can snowboard 355 days out of the year, and that's saying something. Plus it's about the same distance from Hood River, so I can partake in my other sport easily enough, as well.

In any event, still shopping.

However, when it comes to cheesesteaks, well, let's just say Philadelphia doesn't really need to worry just yet.

However, a craving must be taken care of. So we pile in to the Caliber and drive the 36-odd miles to Salem. There's a mall in downtown Salem, and the mall has a Cheesesteak Charlie's. While they have the typical west-coast idea that a cheesesteak should have something in it besides, well, steak and cheese (is it a cheese-mayo-lettuce-tomato-onions-peppers-steak? No, it fucking isn't. Pull up your pants, you fucking hippie.) it's not terrible. Craving satisfied. The world can keep spinning.

However, the first weekend in September we're going to L.A. to see Underworld, and say a fond farewell to the Beesons as they spend their final days as productive and interesting members of society before they turn in to parents and become unbearable to those of us without children. ("Excuse me. EXCUSE ME! Your spawn just puked on me. Take it. Take it away.") On that trip, we'll stop in San Francisco, and I can actually (ironically, natch) get a really good cheesesteak. It has a funny shape to it, somewhat longer and thinner than the actual thing, but it tastes just right. So I'm looking forward to that.

In any event, it occurred to me that _one_ of the songs was inadvertently saved. Unfortunately, I only have it as a 128K MP3, which I had rendered out to send to Wade and Bless 1. The only reason I have it is that I never delete any of my email off the IMAP server, both sent and received. So the sent mail, with its attachment, was still on our servers.

Unfortunately, as it is an MP3, there's really no way it can go on the album. I'm not going to re-record it either, because I'll never be happy with it again. So, since it is just hanging out there like that, I thought it might be fun to give it up, so you could see where things were at. This mix is not mastered, and I don't believe it was the final mix I did. But it is what it is now. Download it here.

Obviously, this features Bless 1 on vocals; Wade did the majority of the drums, and the scratching is by Dave Gamble. This was the general direction of the Album That Was. Whether it will inform the Album That Will Be is anyone's guess.

But that's not the fun part. No.

The old cooler had been on the CPU so long that the heat transfer paste kind of solidified in to something that could only really be described using a term like "glue." When I removed the fan, the CPU came with it, which was unnerving. Popped right out. It seemed to be fine once I separated it from the old cooler. I put it back in, put the new cooler on, flipped the switch, and...

...nothing.

Eventually I got the board to post, but no video, etc. So I decided the new cooler (which wasn't at all silent, and it's this one if you're looking for a product to avoid in the future) was causing some sort of malfucktion, and decided to remove it. Except that gay ass AMD clip wouldn't come off. At all. Period. In trying to remove it, I might have got a little rough. Long story short, I cracked the mobo.

But that's _still_ not the fun part. Bear with me.

Time for a trip to PC Club, where I drop a not-insignificant amount of money on a new motherboard, 2 gigs of RAM, the top-of-the-line Intel Core 2 Duo, a new piece of Nvidia bullshit video card, and to top it off I had to get a new power supply, because my old one didn't have PCIe headers. So there's that.

Get it all home, plugging and screwing and swearing, and presto, it boots. Install Vista, and of course, since it's an entirely new computer but for the DVD-R drive, despite the fact that it's in the same case, the Vista license is "already in use" so now I have to call Microsoft and beg them to de-auth the old one so I can use my several-hundred-dollar Vista Business install on this new one.

But that's not the fun part. Not by a long shot.

I get everything up and running, all the drivers I need installed, and then I plug in the RAID. I'm not 100% sure what happened in the process, but somehow between plugging in the RAID and getting Vista to recognize it, I reduced it to a state that requires a computer forensics specialist to recover.

Things you need to know, in no particular order:

1. The last time I backed up the RAID, in its entirety, was in January.

2. It is now August.

3. Between January and August, I wrote, recorded, mixed, and mastered the first disc of the next Micronaut album. The only place this resides is on that RAID. And it's Type 0, because I like to live dangerously.

So, you know that. Here's the decision I'm faced with: either begin a recovery process which will no doubt end up costing quite a bit of money, and result in fair-to-middling recovery, OR accept fate for what it is and start the recording over.

What would you do in this situation?

Just something to think about.

I'll have a fat new drive, NOT made by Western Digital, tomorrow, and we'll go through this again. I'm hoping that I can just re-install Vista, but I imagine it won't think it's in the same computer, and I'll have to call Microsoft and de-authorize it. That should be entertaining.

In any event, while shopping for, and reading reviews of, new drives, I kept coming across references to things like this. It may not be a jet-pack, but the future is upon us regardless. 128GB flash-based IDE early 2008. Sign me up.

I may actually begin work on the next CR album (which is tentatively entitled "A Short Drop... And A Sudden Stop") before I finish the Micronaut album, which is unusual in the extreme for me, but I just can't seem to focus on the electronic stuff lately. This whole creating in a vacuum thing is kind of tough, and sometimes it doesn't work out so well. Perhaps I'll put up a couple rough mixes for your perusal, to get some feedback on direction in the next few days.