I suppose I should mention that I am now a married man.

nilliac is now my wife. Awesome.

If any more great games come out I might die of happiness.

This is most definitely the best gaming year in over a decade.

My new computer came this morning. I cannot wait to get home to put it all together. There will be photos. Oh yes.

Of course I have to reinstall Windows on the new hardware, but I decided that this time would be different. I have decided to download EVERY application that I need to install on it in advance, and make up a list of the rough order I should install them in (some are prerequisites for others.) I have also downloaded all of the latest drivers for my motherboard and my video card so that I don't have to deal with that at home. I have all of the files on my iPod, which I can plug in to a freshly formatted Windows installation and access without needing any special drivers. Thank you Apple! I was surprised to find out that all of the files add up to 1.15 GB! So if I hadn't done this, not only would it have been annoying to figure out what to get and install, the download time itself would have been a pain.

Behind the cut I have the list that I am using to reinstall everything. I even marked which programs will require extra time to configure and/or restore data from my backup.

( The list! )

This is going to be the smoothest Windows Install ever. Mark my words!

pOrtal is awesome. Do you like puzzle games? If you answered that question with any answer, you owe it to yourself to go buy Portal. Or you know, just get the Orange Box for the deal of the century.

Portal was an incredibly well done experience. I expected (like many others I think) it to simply be a series of puzzles using the portal gun, but leave it to Valve to wrap the entire experience up in a very well told story. I can't really talk about the story at all without completely spoiling it, SO GO PLAY IT RIGHT NOW. The game is sadly only about 2.5 hours long, but after you beat it you can replay through several of the puzzles trying to beat challenge targets like quickest time, least number of portals used and least number of steps taken. That stuff should occupy me for a while longer, and then of course there are the third party maps to look forward to.

Also this game has quite possibly the best credits out of any game ever.

It turns out that Eternal Sonata is multiplayer! It's an RPG for the 360 with a really neat battle system, and we found out that you can set each character to a different controller. Outside of battles it's still 100% single player, but as soon as a battle starts (which is often) then you can play cooperatively. Cailin and I have been doing this and it's been a ton of fun. She's playing the meta game and controls one character in battle, while I control two characters in battle. Traditional RPGs are usually very boring to watch because the combat takes up so much of the play time that the story isn't worth sitting through all of the combat. But by letting us both play through the combat together, we're able to enjoy the game together. Awesome!

I went to Arizona this weekend for Cailin's dad's birthday. Holy crap everyone there obeys the speed limit. Like, not even 3 over. Weird.

I got Zelda Phantom Hourglass. It is awesome. So far it's rivaling Link to the Past as my favorite Zelda game ever (context: I did not like Ocarina, didn't play Majora or Wind Waker, am only half way through TP but like it so far, and haven't played any of the gameboy Zeldas). I can hardly imagine playing a Zelda game without the stylus after playing PH - it just feels perfect. The sword fighting actually feels dynamic, unlike TP where you just spasm your hand to swing your sword. I just did a boss fight that worked just like the Agahnim fight in LttP (reflect his shots with your sword) but it was a ton more fun because having to actually swing with the stylus was neat. The boomerang is an AWESOME idea: you trace the path with the stylus and then it follows that path exactly, so you can hit things around corners, and sometimes you have to stun a bad guy by hitting him from behind with the boomerang. Aiming and firing the bow and arrow is also a lot more satisying. Overall, the stylus simply feels like what Zelda was meant to be played with. If you like 2d Zelda games at all, you owe it to yourself to pick this up.

First of all, if you have a 360 and we're not friends on Xbox Live, post your Gamertag as a comment. Or just add me as a friend: OverloadUT.

I finished Firefly last week. I'm very sad it's over; it was a fantastic series. Last night I watched Serenity on HD DVD. I actually didn't like it as much as the show. It was cool because it had some major story developments but I actually didn't like some of the actors' performances. I thought Jayne's bad-boy attitude felt forced, while it seems much more natural in the episodes. Malcolm's personality also felt very different, especially in the beginning. I suppose the idea is that some time has passed since the last episode and they're really desperate for money so everyone is a little more snippy... but it still felt wrong. Overall it was a decent movie.

I've been playing Halo 3, not that that should surprise you; it's only the biggest release of all time. I only played the earlier Halos a couple times and I wasn't a fan. However, the hype machine is mighty so I picked up Halo 3 on launch day. I'm really glad I did, because this game is actually very good. I've only been playing multiplayer because I don't want to play through the campaign alone and my brother has been busy the last few days. I really really suck at this game in straight up deathmatch ("Slayer") - I think part of it is that I keep forgetting to turn off my torrents which seem to be causing a lot of lag (even though TF2 doesn't seem to have a problem while torrents are running) but the other reason is that I just actually do suck.

Anyway, Halo 3 definitely has the best online system I've ever seen in a game, 360, PC, or otherwise. The matchmaking system is amazing. You can have any number of your friends, either online or in split screen, join a party to go to matchmaking. Basically, matchmaking will find other players to fill up the type of game you want to play, and it will attempt to find people of equal skill. You choose a "social list" before telling it to do the matchmaking - they have things like "couples" which is a mix of gametypes where you always have a team of two, "big teams" which is gametypes that have big teams like capture the flag or just team deathmatch, "rumble pit" which is all non-team gametypes but includes wacky stuff like King of the Hill and Juggernaut. The lists idea is a really great one because often times I know the general idea of what I want to play, but I'm up for a little randomness in exactly what it will be. Oh! And after the party is all formed and it announces the gametype and map, players can press a button to "veto" it; if at least half the players veto it, it chooses something new. That way if no one wants to play King of the Hill, you can still use the "Rumble Type" list and just veto it if it gets selected. Brilliant!

There are almost no loading screens in Halo 3. This is an idea I've never seen before but it's absolutely genius. As soon as you enter a lobby for any gametype (matchmaking, custom game, coop, whatever) the selected map starts loading right away. As in, while you are setting up the settings or inviting friends, the map is loading. That way when everyone is ready and you click to start the game, it launches straight away without waiting. It sure would be cool if other games picked up this idea.

The last really cool feature I'll talk about in Halo 3 is the theater. Every single game you play (including the campaign!) is recorded. You can go at any time to the theater to watch any of your last 25 games. While playing back the demo, you can watch from first person or you can go to third person and fly around while you watch the action. You can fast forward, rewind, and go slow motion. I've gone back and looked at some scenes that I thought were particuarly cool, like how a guy slapped a sticky grenade under my vehicle as I jumped over him, causing me to explode before I hit the ground.

Oh, one more thing: full game stats. Not just wimpy stats like TF2 ended up being, but full awesome stats and an amazingly well designed website. Go ahead and click on "Game Viewer" and then click on my name. Yes, you're looking at a display showing where I was standing and where my victim was standing every time I killed someone. Holy hell.

Waiting for me at home is:

• Halo 3
• Team Fortress 2
• Serenity on HDDVD
• World in Conflict
• Company of Heroes Opposing Fronts

I don't even know where to begin. I pretty much have an equal desire to do each of these things. It's depressing because I know no matter what I choose, I'll be missing out on the ones I didn't choose. There are not enough hours in the day. Maybe I should try out the 28 hour day.

Today Cailin and I have been together for four years. Man that is a long time; it sure doesn't feel like it's been so long.

This anniversary is also notable because of one other fact: This is our last first-date anniversary! Well, sorta. I figure once we're married the dating anniversary takes a back seat to the wedding anniversary. That's right, this day next year, we'll have been married for four months! That makes today an extra special day.

For a fun little blast from the past, feel free to go back and read the original entry I posted after our first date. :)

So, yesterday Cailin and I cleaned the house. Our landlord is having an appraiser come by today because he's refinancing the house, so we figured we should make the place all pretty. Mission accomplished! I didn't get done as much as I wanted to; our closet still needs some work and our room isn't perfect, but the common space is spotless. I scrubbed every inch of the kitchen counters and everything!

During the cleaning, we decided that it was high time we got some houseplants. We had been talking about getting some ever since we moved in, but we actually did it yesterday. We got an awesome big huge plant to go on the (short) filing cabinet that sits between Sean's room and ours. It is my personal mission to keep that plant alive! It's amazing how much nicer the place looks with plants. We definitely needed a little green in there.

On Saturday we had a LAN party to play Team Fortress 2. I configured the server on the server machine in my closet and opened it up to the public. We all (6 of us) joined the game and got on one team. Every time someone joined, we made sure to have them join the other team. We were outnumbered by up 4 players (6 vs. 10) and we did amazingly bad. We started on 2fort which is CTF; our performance there wasn't bad. We manged to win about half the rounds once everyone got used to things. As soon as we switched the map to a "Control Point" style map, we got our asses handed to us. Part of the problem was certainly the fact that about half of our players had never played (or played very little) before Saturday so they were still getting used to how the gametype even works, let alone the dangers of each class you encounter (of which there are nine, so even after 10 hours you still have a lot to learn). We never once took a point, and when we were on defense, our points fell faster than dominoes. Later on in the night we all joined a public server where we could all get on the same team but also had 6 other team mates and the team sizes were even. Those games were definitely more fun because we could really figure out how to work as a team without getting destroyed. I'm really glad we did the "us vs. Internet" games, but perhaps we should have done them after we played on public servers and got more of an understanding of the game's nuances.

This LAN also made me remember a big problem with my friends: Most of them are poor sports. Very poor sports. The kinds of poor sports that make a person not want to play with them anymore. And before I get started, I'll make it clear that I am certainly not a saint when it comes to sportsmanship, so I'm not completely innocent here. My friends complain a lot when they lose, and some of them even go so far as to purposely ruin the game for the other players who were still having fun.

In the past this problem has been the worst with RTS games. It makes sense, because RTS games require a lot of time investment to play a single round, so when you lose, it means the last half hour or hour has been spent losing. Personally, I still have fun (most of the time) when I lose in (multiplayer) games, but some of my friends seem to definitely not. I find the challenge of fighting human opponents the reward itself, and a victory is a nice cherry on top. There are exceptions of course; when I get completely destroyed and I feel like I had no chance, the challenge isn't as rewarding. Luckily those games usually last the least amount of time so I have no problem getting in to the next game and trying to improve. The problem with having poor sports as friends is that it means I usually can't play against them and have fun. If I am doing really well and winning, they are going to bitch and complain which takes away the fun of playing because there's so much whining going on. If they win it's better, but I sometimes feel like I'm not playing my strongest just because I don't want my (annoying) opponents to win. Sometimes the poor sportsmanship manifests itself in indirect insults, which I find to be even worse. For example, if a player used a particular unit very well in a game and it resulted in victory, a poor sport will often say "Man those units are so cheap, there's no way to counter them!" What this does is it tells the winner that the poor sport doesn't think he lost because the winner outplayed him; but rather because the game is broken and the unit is unbalanced. Granted, sometimes games aren't balanced. Sometimes there is a nasty strategy that can't be or is very difficult to counter. Even in those cases, a loser should be a good sport. Perhaps they don't want to play that game anymore, that's fine. But the loser should never blame his defeat in the game mechanics, or it makes the winner's victory hollow and not-fun. Why would anyone want to play with a player that is going to make them feel bad for winning?

The problem is not isolated to just RTSs though. On Saturday when we were getting destroyed, a few people at the LAN started loudly complaining about losing. If you're frustrated, take a break! If you don't want to play the particular way we're playing, suggest something different! A simple "Hey, this is getting too frustrating, how about we join a bigger server?" or "I'm starting not to have fun. Could we allow randoms to be on our team so we have more of a chance?" are both excellent ways to express your views without ruining the time for the people that were still having fun. I totally respect the fact that some people might not have fun with the same things I do. But they shouldn't do things that ruin my time because of it. One player at the LAN had a problem with his computer where it froze up a lot. Every time it froze he would yell out and swear at his computer. Granted, his situation would be extraordinarily frustrating; it's a (computer) problem I wish we could have fixed. There is a player that goes to a lot of the big Fragster LANs who does the same thing (every time he dies. Or gets shot. Or gets looked at funny. Or wins) and it's one of the reasons I haven't been going to Fragsters recently; it's so bad that it makes it not even worth playing.

How can this problem be fixed? I've brought it up with some of my friends before but it doesn't seem to be getting better for the most part.

For the record, when I am playing a single player game, I swear like a sailor and yell at the TV quite a bit. It's a problem I'm trying to fix.

Team Fortress 2 beta was released yesterday.

Anyone who pre-orders the Orange Box gets to play in the TF2 beta, and that is pure awesome. Yesterday was funny though. They said that if you pre-ordered it, you would get to play it on "the 17th." There were many, I included, that hoped this would mean a midnight unlock. Everyone could pre-load the content in to Steam since last Thursday, but it's encrypted and probably missing the executable. All Valve has to do is press the magic button and it unlocks.

As expected, however, it did not unlock at midnight. The next morning, the forums were crawling with people trying to figure out when it would be unlocked. Valve said that it would be "late in the day". A lot of people thought this meant late in the work day, so around 5pm in Valve's timezone. Silly people! 6pm came and went. 7pm. 8pm. Sometime around here Valve said they were working on a linux binary problem and that if they couldn't get it fixed in the next couple hours, they would release anyway and fix the linux binary later. 9pm. 10pm. 11pm. It wasn't until 11:30 pm that the content finally unlocked. There were moments of panic as the decrypting process looked like it hung but that stuff passed and it looked like we were going to be able to play TF2 on the 17th after all! I waited those exciting couple minutes for the decryption to finish. Then I double clicked on Team Fortress 2! "Preparing to launch Team Fortress 2" it said! Yay! The dialog disappeared, can't be long now! And then... nothing.

What.

A quick survey of the forums revealed that everyone was having this problem. Valve manged to make their deadline by releasing a beta that literally wouldn't launch. Clever bastards.

Anyway, then an update was pushed out at around 12:30 and I got to play with Dan for a couple hours before going to bed way later than I should have.

Also, I have finally started to watch Firefly. It's way overdue.

It's pretty good so far!

First of all, I set up Facebook to automagically pull my Livejournal posts in as notes. This entry will be the first test!

So, I've started to actually get some physical exercise in my life. You know, besides the arduous walk from my computer chair to the bathroom. I have started to bike to work!

Cailin started it. Her current job is only 1.7 miles down the road and she decided that she could just ride to work instead of driving. It was certainly a better use for her bike than sitting in our storage cabinet. She's even close enough that she bikes home for lunch with time to spare. Anyway, seeing her ride each day got me thinking that my work isn't too far away to bike to as well. I decided to ask my mom if I could borrow her bike so I could try out the ride and be sure it's something I'll stick with before buying a bike of my own.

The next day, I tried out the 6 mile ride. Ouch! The fact that it is 6 miles is not the bad part. The bad part is a ferocious beast known as Sunset Parkway. Google Earth tells me that it's a 130ft hill over a pretty short distance. Coming back isn't as bad because half the elevation is spread out over a very long distance. After the ride I felt fantastic. The next opportunity I could, I went to our local bike shop and bought a helmet, headlight, flashing taillight, and a biking computer (cyclometer.) Over the course of the next couple weeks I kept going back to the bike shop for little things. I got a pack that sits on top of the rack so I don't have to bike with a bunch of crap in my pockets. Cailin and I have been trying to get in the habit of biking to local places instead of driving. We've biked over to Vintage Oaks a few times and also to Marvin's for breakfast. It's very satisfying to bike because not only is it good exercise but it saves money (gas) as well!

Yesterday for our date day, Cailin and I rode a whole bunch. We went over to the bike shop so Cailin could get a tire repair kit and I got some better sunglasses for riding. I asked them about what bikes would be good for me and they made a few suggestions. I tried out one they had in the store but didn't like it as much as one I had tried a couple weeks back. They said they had one of the ones I tried but they had to assemble it. I told them to do it so I could compare the difference. Then we rode off to Tag's for sandwiches and then over to Starbucks and then all the way to Vintage Oaks so we could go to the sports shop. Cailin wanted to get a heart rate monitor for proper cardio exercise and also got some nice biking shorts. On the way back we stopped at the bike shop again to see if they were done assembling the bike. He was just about done so we waited around. I tried it out, and it was just as awesome as I had remembered. It didn't take long to decide that I wanted to get it. He installed the extras (kickstand, rack, water bottle thingy, cyclometer) and then it was mine! I love it so much; I can ride so much faster and it fits me way better than my mom's bike (which is not the right size for me). To celebrate I rode to my mom's house to show it off and then to Vintage Oaks and home again. Through the day, I ended up riding 23 miles; the most I've done in one day!

Cailin feels like she got a new bike as well. She is now using my mom's bike, which is a huge step up from her cheap-o Target bike. It's also the right size for her, so it worked out very well.

Riding to work this morning was intense. The guy at the shop told me the proper way to bike and it turns out I had it all wrong. I always thought that you should be on as high a gear as you can do, and pedal hard. He told me that the key is to pedal fast, not hard. That means I should stay in the middle gears most of the time and only switch to higher gears when I'm already moving very fast. He said that I will go much faster if I do it that way and will get less tired out. I tried out this technique on my way to work today, and he was half right. I did go much faster than usual; I was over 15mph most of the way, whereas I was probably more around 11 or 12 before. However, it was way more tiring. At first I thought he was just wrong about it being less tiring, but then I realized the obvious answer is that of course it's more tiring if I'm going faster than I was before. It was a nice workout, and I look forward to biking home.

I'm also now keeping a biking log. Every day when I go to work, I am going to reset my biking computer and then record the average speed when I arrive at work. I want to see if my average speed goes up as I get more in shape.

Christmas is approaching, and for the gamers out there, this means that our wallets will be empty because from now to December, fantastic games will be coming out on an almost weekly basis.

I have started to lose track of the games I'm looking forward to, so I decided to make a list. The ones marked with question marks are ones I'm not sure if I'll get:

8-21: Bioshock
8-27: John Woo's Strangehold
9-17: Eternal Sonata
9-25: Halo 3?
10-28: Guitar Hero 3?
11-1: Mass Effect
11-12: Unreal Tournament 3
11-12: Super Mario Galaxy
11-20: Rock Band
12-3: Super Smash Brothers Brawl

Yuri, our awesome foreign exchange student from Japan, went home on Monday and I am sad. :(

Being a host family was one of the most rewarding experiences I've done in my life. I still don't fully understand why; she was only with us for two weeks but I feel so enriched by the experience. She taught us a bit about Japanese and Japanese culture and obviously she got a huge serving of American culture. She seemed to be quite amused by Japantown.

Most interesting factoid I learned: In Japan, they say "ladies first". In English. Kind of like how we say "hors d'oeuvres" or "Gesundheit" (French and German respectively.)

Also, we were blown away when we asked what her favorite TV show was and she said "Lost". She had to spell it for us because we assumed she was trying to say a different word and was pronouncing it wrong. They have Lost over there?

Don't you ever wish you could just like... plug in your brain to the computer and have it dump all of your thoughts into your Livejournal each day?

I love writing about what I'm up to and what I'm thinking so I can look back on it later, but I don't actually like the [i]writing[/i] part. Mostly because I can never express everything I want to properly and I always leave stuff out despite spending ages typing it up.

So... We're hosting a Japanese foreign exchange student. She's super sweet and it's been one of the best experiences of my life.

When book 6 came out, the ending was spoiled for Cailin and I by idiots online (In World of Warcraft, specifically. Actually they were in our own guild. Asses.) After that happened, we realized that we would need to be very careful when the final book was released. We decided that once the book came out, we would avoid all online forums and anywhere there is user-input.

Our ideal way of enjoying the Harry Potter books is the audiobooks. Jim Dale is a mastermind and his readings of the books are absolutely spectacular. So when we decided to avoid online forums, we also decided something else: We would take a road trip to Vegas when book 7 was released and listed to the whole book in one go. Unfortunately, when the release date came around, we had plans. I don't have the vacation days at work to take off a Friday, and trying to do the whole trip from Friday evening to Sunday evening would be quite difficult.

Yesterday however, we decided to throw caution to the wind and to do the trip we had been looking forward to all this time. So at around 8pm, we left for Vegas.

We drove for as long as we could stay awake, and stopped at a Best Western in Tehachapi for the night. Now it's Saturday morning and I am tying this on the computer they have in the lobby. We're about to set off and expect to arrive in Vegas this afternoon!

I will be uploading some pictures to Facebook via mobile upload, so check my profile page often if you want pictures. :) And if you don't have a Facebook then you're missing out and it's your own fault because I invited you all in a previous post!

Yesterday I signed up for Facebook.

I have heard about Facebook many times over the years, more often recently, but I never really knew what it was. It didn't help that you really can't view much of the site at all without signing up. I had always assumed it was "just another MySpace" which basically meant "stay the hell away from it" because we all know that MySpace is the cesspool of the Internet.

However, I decided to check it out anyway. I am very glad I did! It's a social networking site, similar to MySpace and Friendster and such, but the biggest difference is in how crisp everything is. Everything about the site is very clean and easy to navigate.

Where it really shines, however, is the photo sharing. When you upload photos, you tag them with who is in the photo. You do this by actually clicking on the photo to show where that person is. Then when you go to view the photo later, you can mouse over the faces and it'll say who they are. The tagging is even better than that though; When you tag a photo with one of your fiends, they will see on their page that a new photo has been tagged with their name. When you view "all photos" of a person, it not only shows photos that person has uploaded, but also any photos that their friends have uploaded that have been tagged with their name. You can also view all photos that have you and your friend in them.

Basically, I recommend trying it out. It's a neat way to easily stay in contact with friends. It's not a blog replacement however, which I actually like.

If you decide to check it out, add me as a friend!

So, we had our first Boardgame Night at the new place!

Maybe I should back up a little bit. I moved. Cailin and I are now living in Novato in an awesome awesome place. We love it! I'll post more about that later.

On Monday I went to Gamescape and decided to pick up a boardgame. I didn't have a specific one in mind so I had them suggest one, explaining that I enjoyed deep strategy games. They suggested Tigris and Euphrates. When I got home, I opened it up and read through the rules with Sean. After an hour or so of figuring out the rules (it's complicated!) we decided that we wanted to play right away! We tried to get at least one person to come over that night but it was too late notice so we weren't able to do it.

The next day I told Jim about it and we decided to play that evening. Sean, Cailin, Jim and I learned the rules and played one game; it was very fun! The game took 2 hours, which is only 30 minutes over the timeframe given on the box - that's pretty good for a first play-through! We learned some important things in our first playthrough, like the fact that monuments are a lot better than they sound. And a bunker of temples can still be quite vulnerable to an external conflict. Also I don't think any of us really used the Kings as well as we should have.

I won the game, barely. I had one more point than Jim and I got that point during the move that ended the game.

I look forward to playing next week!

I haven't quite gotten the hang of this Nethack thing yet. I have managed to get to the second or third level but then I usually die by doing something stupid.

I was feeling cocky because my ranger could own anything with his bow, so when I met my first shopkeeper ever, I decided to take his stuff and shoot him. He zapped me with a wand, killed me in one hit, and took all my stuff. Wah!

Do you back up your files? And I don't mean making a copy of your files in another directory; I mean outside-your-computer backups. No? Then click here. You can backup up to 2 gigs of data for free, or you can pay $5 a month to backup an unlimited amount of data.

I've been using Mozy for a couple weeks now and I've been very happy with it.

If you have read that and still aren't using it or some other form of backup, then read on!

About six months ago I noticed that one of my hard drives was having problems. It was VERY slow to read it and even caused my machine to lock up frequently while trying to access it. Fearing that it was breathing its last breaths, I decided to unplug the drive until I could get a replacement to transfer the data to. It was my 500gb spanning RAID array, so I didn't have enough space on my other drives to transfer the data over.

About two weeks ago, another one of my HDDs went sour directly after I had to pull the power plug because a game had hard locked my system. That was made me finally go and buy the replacement hard drives and sign up for Mozy. I was able to put up with not having the data on my RAID array for those months, but now I was getting really worried that I was not going to get my data back.

It took and entire weekend of troubleshooting and using countless pieces of software and even buying a piece of hardware for me to get any data off of my 500gb array. It appears that one of the two drives in the array went kaput but the other one is fine. What this means is that any files that were partially or fully on the bad HDD are now lost forever, but the files on the first drive are safe. I managed to use a program to clone the 500gb array to my new 1tb array. I had to abort the clone when it was literally half way done because that's when it started reading data from the broken drive, which it could only manage to do at a rate of about 1 sector per second. I would have had to let it run for 1866 years to let it run to read all 1 billion sectors. After shutting down and unplugging the busted array, I booted up to find that the clone worked: I now a drive with the same label and size as my old dead array. When I started to browse the files on it, I noticed something strange: Every single file was there! Knowing that this must be a mistake, I started digging deeper and found that it was. All of the files were there, yes. And they all had the proper size, yes. However, they didn't all have the proper contents. The ones that resided on the old broken drive had all 0x00 as their contents.

I knew that I wasn't going to get all of my files back, but now I was looking at an even worse problem: I can't tell which files I've lost and which I haven't without opening each one of them in a hex editor! But then I remembered that I have the ability to tell computers to do my menial work for me! I wrote a program (my first ever C# program in fact) that scans the first 2000 bytes of every file in a given directory and spits out a list of every file that has nothing but 0x00 is those first 2000 bytes. The output is smart too: Instead of listing every file in a directory, it will simply list the directory name. Then using some regular expressions I converted that output from that program in to a batch file that created the directory structure needed and then moved every defunct file from my "good" directory to my "bad" directory. And what I am left with is a folder that only contains real files!

It also allowed me to finally easily see what the damage is as far as what files I lost. I am very happy to report that every single one of my "documents" made it through - that folder contains all the school assignments I've ever done on the computer as well as lots of miscellaneous notes and tiny projects. Basically, every word and excel doc I've ever created. My second worry was my "projects" folder. That's where I store every project I work on, such as CTF4, Civstats, my Bookworm Cheaty Cheat Cheat program, and lots of school assignments. Sadly, I have lost almost everything from CTF4. I still have the mod of course; that can be downloaded from my website. But all of the uncompressed art and audio files are gone. Just like that! I was too lazy to actually back up my files earlier, and now I'm paying the price. The one comforting fact is that the CTF4 files aren't really needed anymore. Even if I were to make a new CTF4 when UT3 comes out, I would need to do it from scratch and those old uncompressed files wouldn't help much. And part of the nature of UT2004 mods is that the source code is readable by anyone who wants to open the .u file in the editor, so I haven't even lost any source code. Also, that's the only project I lost. There are two others, but I had backups of them on my work machine so I haven't really lost them.

All things considered, I came out of this mess without too much damage. Many hundreds of gigs have been lost but most of that was stuff I downloaded and it could be downloaded again.

Don't let this happen to you! Backup your files! Do it now! Mozy! It's for Mac and Windows so you have no excuse!