Well folks, its been a while since I last wrote but there is an explanation for all of this.

I haven't been very lucky with data recently. I wrote a post last night that explained everything that I am about to say but, the post didn't actually post. Therefore this is the second time I am writing the same post. Hopefully this time the message actually gets posted. I will make a backup this time before I post just to make sure that the site is working correctly.

Before this happened and in my last news article I was mostly complaining about how I had four years worth of notes (including those related to xoops projects and this site) typed up in Wiki. All nicely formatted, easily navigated with cross linked pages and redirects. I had just set it up, and had thrown my old hard copy notes away. Over the next couple of days, some how my data is gone, before I had made a backup. MySQL didn't have any of my tables, or any of the files that are normally in the data folder. I am still wondering where the data went. Anyway, thats not too big of a problem. I remember most of my notes, and can write or type them up again, its just a bit of a pain that all of the MySQL data recovery techniques I know didn't work.

Holiday Fun!
This all happened before I took a holiday to my home country of England. Which I must say was a great trip since I got to see a lot of my friends and family. I took this time to not worry about anything and just enjoyed my time off. My break was exactly what I needed, until it was time to come home. Me and my girlfriend were trying to fly back on Wednesday 27th of June. Since we were flying standby, we had heard that the day before looked like we would have had better chances of getting on. We decided to go to LGW anyway, since we figured we would get on. We arrive at the airport and go to the ticket desk. We're told to check in with the regular people. We waited in line which took at least 45 minutes to be told that we need to go back to the ticket desk. We go back to the ticket desk and guess what... The flight the day before had been canceled and there was no chance of us getting on the US flight to Charlotte. Ok, we'll wait for the Philly flight. We wait a couple of hours, go back to the ticket desk, and they tell us there is only one seat to Philly, and there was no chance of one of us catching the connecting flight to Charlotte. What a waste. Well, to cut a long story short, we went to the airport and had a similar experience every time. We ended up just heading back to where we were staying and trying to figure out how we were going to fly back home. I think we went back to the airport three times before we could get on a flight. And the strange thing was that the flight to Philly had been canceled the day before. I figured there was no way we were going to be able to get back since most people that were flying to Philly were going to get on the Charlotte flight. Oh well, we made it back finally.
The next day, after getting a long nights sleep, I had to take my girlfriend back CLT for her to fly out on another holiday to the Dominican Republic. Everything goes well for this one,. I go to the airport, wait inline with her, she checks in, I said goodbye for a week and then left the airport. When I finally get to my car and leave the lot, I realized that I had no money. I figured, well its been less then 30 minutes so they won't charge me (this is CLT's policy) I get to the gate and wait inline for a minute or so while the people in front pay. I get to the gate hand the lady my ticket, and she tells me I owe $1. I say, I have not got $1, how long was I in the parking lot for?
"32 Minutes" she replied.
I franticly searched all of the compartments in my car, trying to get the measly dollar. In combination I had .90 GBP, and about $.53. They wouldn't take international money, which I would have happily given them the $1.80 or so I had in GBP, and wouldn't pro-rate my ticket so that I only had to pay the $.07 worth of time I was over. Even tho by the time I actually found a parking spot, waited on a lift & then waited on the cars in front at the booth, easily came to 5 minutes of extra time. Anyway, I have to mail the City of Charlotte a check for $1 in 10 days. Is it really worth paying some one to open all of these letters and deposit the checks? Surely the fee for depositing the checks must lessen the profit considerably. Oh well.

Good to be home.
I think I have got back into the swing of things, but my sleep pattern is still a bit off. I have to go to bed early and wake up even earlier. I did get to see the Transformers movie at Concord Mills mall in Concord NC the other day. I really liked the movie even tho I did not watch too much of the transformers on TV or read any of the comics. I did play with the toys but I was too young to remember specifics about them now. Very good movie, although I think that I will have to buy the DVD so that I can check out the fast moving scenes in slow motion and in HD so that I can see if the effects were as good as they looked, or if they just made all of the effects super fast so that it only appears to be good effects and rendering.

Back to work.
I will be hard at work again after this weekend, working on things such as Linux and Windows. Will probably do some custom Xoops development with PHP and MySQL and maybe even make some tools. My goal for today is to get this news article posted, finish my honey-do list, re-do all of my notes and get some well deserved rest..
If any one is wondering why I'm slow, its because I do actually have to work like most other people. I co-own an full service IT company in Concord NC. Which means I work more then full time on a wide range of projects. I really enjoy working for myself. I like the wide range of projects that I get to work on. From building custom web sites and applications with PHP/MySQL, to computer repair / services and networking. The job is very rewarding.

I should have a good idea of the projects I'm working on and shall be completing very soon. But my priorities are listed above.
Check back soon for more updates (I'll try not to bore you with gruesome details next time).