so two time a charm right? if you remember, about a year and a half ago i did a reinstall on my laptop. i had backed everything off the main partition to my second “storage” partition. and through years of evolution and progress of human intellectual development, i promptly

• Reformatted the ENTIRE HARD DRIVE
• RESIZED both partitions
• did a full and complete install

And of course, its only after i log back in and go “okay lets copy my backup over….” i realize exactly what I did.

Lucky me, Joel had asked me a few weeks prior if i had any NTFS recovery tools because his other friend needed it. I fished up
Bitmart Restorer200 Professional.

It saved my ass. It completely recovered the entire hard drive. It recovered the main partition and the backup partition with all of my files intact. It had everything.

Yesterday, in the morning, i was copying over a massive amount of files over to my Micro Vault Pro usb drive. I walked away not really thinking about it. When i was in the kitchen i thought to myself, “you know thats probably a bad idea.. theres no heat sink.. it probably doesn’t handle having over a gig of files transfered to it.”

As i’m clicking “cancel” to end the transfer because i can FEEL the heat being generated on the drive, explorer stops responding.. then i get this wonderful error “File path too deep” and the drive just crashes.

The hardware itself was fine. However the file system completely corrupted and nuked itself. After attempts to even mount the drive in linux i came to the ultimate and sad conclusion that i had lost all my work… A HA! But I remembered restorer2k!!

I loaded this sucker up again and tada! it restored all the content of my micro drive.

If you *EVER* need to recover files you have lost.. this tool really does work. Aah how precarious my life seems as so much of the things i need are comprised of 1’s and 0’s. Its a good thing i can recover it.. I cant say the same about a lot of the other bullshit!

today, technology is cool

When I first bought my car, I had every intention of working on it. Not so much hands on, but making it the fun project car it was meant to be. Unfortunately I had just never gotten around to it. It was always “ill do it next month”. Joel was doing the same thing. We both needed to fix some things about our car but neither of us got around to it. We were both in this love-hate relationship with our cars.

Every time I looked at my car, I was always filled with as much inspiration as I was disappointment. I could see all the things I loved about it, all the things I wanted to spoil her with, then I remembered all the things about her that made me want to kick her. I was a bad owner. I wasn’t treating her right, and in the end all the things about her that made me dislike her were things I needed to fix.

Get the ball rolling right? So I have. With the help of Bryan, Ive been able to start the upgrades and investments into my car. Investments? Yes. Not because it increases its dollar value, but because it makes me like it all over again. Its an investment of my own self interest and self gratification. Ive slowly begun to re-ignite the love affair with my car.

Its amazing what 2 small “upgrades” do to the car. New Suspension and New Exhaust.

RS*R ExMag Exhaust
I have replaced my Greddy Evo with the RS*R ExMag Exhaust. While the Greddy is a popular choice, it was always just an interim choice for me. I needed to get rid of the mexican rice exhaust that plagued my car when i first bought it and the Greddy was a cheap and quick solution. While it was significantly quieter and a better performer, it still left a lot to be desired.

My new exhaust is not only extremely and amazingly quiet, the sound she does emit is very appealing. I can actually hear my engine and my vtec. It also just has a very pleasant hum to it. It looks great on the car as well. It fits perfectly with my GS-R rear bumper. It also has noticeable performance gains. Well worth every penny.

TEIN Super Street Damper
My existing suspension was shot. My shocks and struts were dead and the skunk2 coilovers that were in place just weren’t cutting it. Swapping out my suspension had always been an initial change I had intended on doing but like all else, it just never happened. I have upgraded to the TEIN ss coilovers and they are fucking amazing.

My car handles amazingly well. Even with stock front strut bar. The TEIN SS Coilovers offer me 16 levels of damping force, and ride height adjustable springs. I had intended on getting the EDFC, but I think i will hold off for now.

Bryan has recommended a few strut bar and sway/tie bar kits. That along with new wheels is next. I will be converting to a 5 lug wheel so we’ll see what I get next!