That's Crooks and Liars' John Amato with actor George Clooney. Way to go, John.

A few weeks ago I wrote that my 9 month old Dell desktop's hard drive crashed out of the blue. It had my last 9 months of work on it.

Dell replaced it and then I had to decide whether to try a data recovery service to try and restore the files on the old one. They ran the drive and it had 130,000 errors on it but they could find 20 MG of data, which included some valuable stuff for--like old TalkLeft files that are no longer on the server, my Quicken files, my newer client files and my pictures. So, I told them to go ahead.

It cost $1,250.00 for the restore and another $100 for an 80 GB USB hard drive which I'm about to hook up and see how usable the files are. Bottom line: Back up your stuff. $1,350.00 could have bought me a new laptop or a vacation. Now I'll get neither. It sucks that I had to spend it for this. But, it's my own fault for not taking the time to back up onto a cd-rom or dvd.

It's back to work for me, here's a space for you.

The calendar says it's my birthday, so I'm off to do something different, like work out at the gym and go shoe-shopping. Here's a space for you - what's on your mind today?

• Jesus' General writes a letter.
• The Poor Man creates a cartoon.
• Arianna's Russert Watch
• Jane Hamsher on Daniel Schorr and Judith Miller
• Heretik on the Saint Patrick Four war protesters being found guilty only of lesser charges in Binghamton.
• TBogg on Ralph Nader

"It's a death trap, it's a suicide rap. We gotta get out while we can...."[Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run]

The New York Times:

.... as many as 2.5 million people jammed evacuation routes on Thursday, creating colossal 100-mile-long traffic jams that left many people stranded and out of gas as the huge storm bore down on the Texas coast.

Acknowledging that "being on the highway is a deathtrap," Mayor Bill White asked for military help in rushing scarce fuel to stranded drivers.

A bus carrying nursing home evacuees caught fire, killing 20.

Politics, hurricanes, crime, whatever's on your mind, here's a place to inform and vent.

Say Hello to the first official Daily Kos spin-off site, Street Prophets, about faith and politics. Markos of Daily Kos explains more about the site.

Instapundit and NZ Bear have come up with a non-partisan way for bloggers to help their states cut the fat in their budgets to fund the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts.

In a million years, I wouldn't have thought that a 9 month old computer would have a hard drive failure. But, my Dell desktop, which I love, did just that early this morning. After hours of trying to figure out the problem with Dell Tech support, being told to give up, they'll have a tech come over with a new hard drive covered by warranty next week, I had to face the issue of lost data - mostly Quicken stuff and billing - which is pretty critical. Not to mention, all my saved passwords to news sites, subscription services and software programs are gone. There's no solution, until I can bring the old, corrupted hard drive (a Maxtor) with its "code 7 failure" to a data recovery service next week, and decide whether it's worth the $500 to$1,000. they will charge to try and recover the old files.

In the meantime, I've hooked up the the Sony desktop that I used before the Dell, but it has not been updated in 9 months, so it's been many more hours updating Windows and virus and other software - and I have none of my current files.

Bottom line: I haven't felt like blogging, particularly since there's nothing in the news besides FEMA and Judge Roberts, both of which I'm kind of OD'd on... so feel free to take over.

Summer is definitely over. I have court at 8:30 and again at 2:00 and yet again at 3:30. On the plus-side, the weather in Denver is perfect, even driving from court to court is a pleasure and I have the best day job in the world. Also, my latest post is up on Huffington Post, and maybe TChris or Last Night in Little Rock will be around.

On the minus-side, I don't have a Blackberry or other means of posting when I'm away from my desk, so feel free to keep each other up-to-the-minute with news and your views. I'll be back tonight.

If you need something to get you started, check out Bill Maher, speaking to President Bush:

"On Your Watch, We've Lost Almost All Of Our Allies, The Surplus, Four Airliners, Two Trade Centers, A Piece Of The Pentagon And The City Of New Orleans”...

I'll be offline most of the day, if you'd like to take over, be my guest.

Time for a laugh:

Q: What is Bush's position on Roe vs. Wade?

A: He doesn't really care how people get out of New Orleans.

And, Via Crooks and Liars, President Bush writes a note to Condi Rice advising of his need for a potty break.