I recover my blog from a backup, with the help of a friend.

I don’t want to spend too much time blogging here. As you can see from the looks of things, I have a lot to do to get this blog back in order.

So here’s the short version of what happened at approximately 3:00 PM MST on Friday, February 17, 2006:

I updated my server from Mac OS X 10.4 to 10.4.4. While the update was downloading, I installed Backup, the .Mac-compatible backup software. Although I was automatically backing up the blog database nightly, I wasn’t backing up the theme and other content files. I set backup up to do this.

At about 3 PM, the backup setup was ready to go and Mac OS X 10.4.4 was installed and needed a system reboot. Do I backup first and reboot later? Or reboot now and backup later?

I made the wrong decision: reboot first. My hard disk was evidently sicker than I thought after installing Mac OS X weeks ago. It crashed.

I mean that quite literally. I actually heard a bad noise coming out of the hard disk. When your hard disk makes noise, it isn’t a good thing.

Skip lots of troubleshooting stuff here.

I got my computer back on Friday, February 24, with a brand new hard disk and, while they were in there, a brand new DVD drive. I brought it home and reformatted it, then installed Mac OS X 10.4 server (again). The installation went quickly and worked the first time. (Duh. I guess that’s the way it’s supposed to be.)

On Saturday, I started restoring the databases that make up my two WordPress-based sites. For some reason, I did wickenburg-az.com first. And I spent all day Saturday and all morning Sunday getting the site back up and running under WordPress.

More long story skipped.

Today, I had to take Jack the Dog to the vet. He hurt his “wrist” chasing a rabbit the other day and wasn’t putting weight on his leg. X-ray showed no obvious break, but the vet splinted the leg so he could walk on the splint. Unfortunately, Jack didn’t know he could walk on it. He continued to limp around, but now he had this big red thing on his leg. So he whined. A lot. And made in impossible for me to work. I guess I deserve that for taking my dog to work with me.

So I decided to fill the otherwise dead time by getting this site back online. And one of the first steps was to restore the database that makes up the entries and pages.

Trouble is, I got an error message when I attempted to restore.

I wasted hours trying to find help on online forums.

Miraz to the rescue! She knows WordPress inside and out and actually understands a little of how MySQL works. Some e-mail went back and forth, then a live chat via iChat. She walked me through a step-by-step import of the database file. I don’t know why MySQL Administrator choked on the file, but CocoaMySQL was able to swallow it. The result: what you see here. And now even I know a little more abotu MySQL.

Okay, so it ain’t pretty today. In fact, it looks suspiciously like the default WordPress theme. That’s because it is.

(If you’re reading this post a few days from its post date, you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. With luck, it’s looking more like aneclecticmind.com by the time you’re reading it.)

My next job is to get the right theme installed and make it look like aneclecticmind.com.

But frankly, I had two glasses of wine with dinner and have a third glass sitting right here with me now. It’s 7 PM and I’d like a shower before I waste an hour watching an episode of Stargate SG-1 off our DVR (a Tivo-like device) and hit the sack. So I guess it’ll just have to keep on looking like the default WordPress theme, without pictures, for another day or so.

Is that okay with you, Larry?