It's CT Appreciation Week!

{Well, actually, it's now the middle of CT Appreciation Week!}

What's a CT? It's an acronym for Creative Team. Many digi-designers and digi-shops have one or two or twelve that help them out doing things like making sample pages with kits, creating quick pages (QPs) and mini albums, doing fun things in the forums, and posting their layouts in galleries all over the web.

This year, as a thank you gift for all they do, digi-designers all over the world banded together to create a MONSTER of a digiscrapping treasure trove of elements, papers, QPs, templates, brag books, and more! For a look at some of the previews, visit the official CT Week blog. There's even some special contests for the CTs to participate in throughout the week over at DST.



I wasn't able to participate this year, but I will be sure to next year!

Project 365 - Week Nine Complete

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

25% off everything GREEN
today and tomorrow only at
Plain Digital Wrapper - even
my new Shamrockin' Quick
Pages set!

And, to make it easy for you,
they're all in ONE Place!

Click here to visit the
Get Green...Save Green sale!

Happy Birthday Carolynn!

Click on your birthday card to view
and download a bigger version!

XXXOOO,
Cat

EHD disaster report...

Nada...no data left...6 years of photos gone...thousands of digital graphics gone...and who knows what else...gone...irrecoverable.

The hard drive doctor said:

We are sorry to inform you that your hard drive data is not recoverable. After careful analysis, our clean room engineers reported that they were unable to get a sufficiently clean data stream from the drive to recover any of the drive data because the drive had a combination of physical surface head crashes and significant misalignment of the read/write heads that irreparably corrupted the data surfaces.

Crap.

In the meantime, here's what I am doing to try to recover my peace and sanity:

1. Purchase a new domain name, catriona-macgregor.com, with a web host that will give me 1,500GB of file space on their servers. [Yes - that's 1 1/2 TERAbytes! Woo hoo!] And all for $6.95 per month if I choose a 2 year subscription...no brainer there! Check it out!
   
2. Redesign my existing design portfolio website and upload it to the new site.
3. Develop folders on the site where I will be storing my backup files. (might as well start out somewhat organized!)
4. Send out an e-mail to my friends and family to try to gather photos from shared events. We frequently would make disks to share so at least I'll get some things back so I can scrap them!
5. Go through my saved e-mails for digiscrap purchases and make a list so I can contact the store owners and see if they will be so kind as to let me download them again. I know some kits have been permanently retired but maybe they have a backup...LOL!
6. Resurrect my first two months of Project 365 by copying the [very reduced] images from my blog. Thank goodness I posted them weekly!
7. Develop a weekly schedule for backing up all other internal and external drives.
8. Retrieve my poor dead EHD from the 'morgue' and send it in for a replacement while it's still under warranty.
   

Please, BACK UP YOUR FILES! NOW!

It WILL happen to you...and without warning.

A note about emerging data storage technology...
Solid state drives (SSDs) have been around for a long time but with limited storage capacity and slower speeds than traditional hard drives. However, what IS new is that they are being re-engineered to jump into the laptop and external drive market because...they do not crash! No moving parts! Huzzah!

• StorageSearch.com has a whole bunch of information on their site - go check it out.
• Another company developing SSDs is Crucial. They are making drives that are pretty small...32gb is NOT enough for any digi scrapper's storage needs!

I went to Fry's today, to investigate, but they do not have any SSDs in yet...they're too new! There are two on their website but they're way expensive and Remember, as demand increases, the price will go down and the capacity and speed will go up.

Today is International Women's Day!

March is Women's History month and today, 8 March, is International Women's Day (IWD), commemorating women's rights and peace. In some form or other, International Women's Day has been celebrated for over 95 years!

Women and Color - we love it!
Many women's groups around the world use the color purple to represent them, especially the suffragettes. In the UK in 1908, the Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) chose these three colors: purple, green, and white. They were then adopted as the official colors for IWD.

- white for purity* in public as well as private life
- purple for justice, dignity, self-reverence, and self-respect
- green for hope and new life

In recent years, the color gold has been added, representing 'a new dawn' and commonly used to represent the second wave of feminism.

* Remember, this was developed in 1908! In recent years, the use of the color white has fallen out of favor because the concept of 'purity' is a controversial issue and international meanings differ greatly.

The United Nations' theme for International Women's Day in 2008 is "Shaping Progress."
Learn more about it here.

To help us all celebrate...here's a wee bit of word art for you...You GO girl!

Click on the image to get it. Please share this blog posting with all your women friends so they can come get a copy, too!

It's Good Karma Friday - Get Yours Here!

Karma literally means "deed" or "act" and is comparable to the universal law of "cause and effect" that governs all life. According to the principles of Karma, doing something positive results in a good effect and doing something negative results in a bad effect. These effects may be seen immediately or be delayed...but they will be seen eventually.

The more good you do, the more good Karma you have. So, let's go build up that good Karma today!

• HelpOthers.org has tons of kindness ideas
• The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation inspires people to practice kindness and to “pass it on” to others.
• Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness where you can get help or help others with their research.
• Volunteer Match has hundreds of ways to help out.

Here's a great quote I found today:

Travel light, live light,
spread the light, be the light.

>: namaste

Disaster can strike anyone - anytime...

The dreaded external hard drive (EHD) crash has hit without warning. Of course, I didn't have a backup. Of course, it's the one with my photos (for the past 6 years!) on it. Of course, it's also the one with my digiscrapping purchases and freebie downloads on it...over 10,000 files...nicely categorized by artist. Over 200 gb of my life...clicking away and 'drive not recognized'. Crap.

The only wee light at the end of the tunnel is that it happened while I was transferring my own digi designs and kits in process to a new EHD and I got almost all of them. ;-)

So here's the story of my journey to EHD recovery...

1. Reboot laptop...maybe it's just overworked...no luck.
2. Take to work and see if it works on my laptop there...no luck.
3. Give to geek friend to have it evaluated (without opening the case)...no luck.
4. Check warranty...still covered but they don't get your files back - just new hardware.
5. Take to local professional shop to try recovery software (without opening the case)...no luck. $90. They recommend taking it to a local recovery pro shop with a cleanroom who will open it up and try to save the data.
6. Call pros and make appt for next week. $100. Recovery not guaranteed but if they can, it may cost over $1000. Ouch.
7. Buy new 500gb EHD for recovered files...positive thinking. $179.
8. Start researching online storage options for backups. I have a web site with lots of space on it...I never thought to backup my files there until a design buddy mentioned it! Doh!
9. Back up all other internal and external drives...immediately.

Are my files worth it...yes. Are my fingers and toes crossed...yes.
Stay tuned...and learn from my misfortune: BACK UP YOUR FILES! NOW!