Vista machines and other Windows operating systems that have installed all their updates are thought to be safe from the worm. Not totally convinced of this myself I did a check of my machine using a tool McAfee is providing free of charge – W32/Conficker Stinger v10.0.1.537. Do not despair if your machine proves to be infected as various removal utilities are available, for example BDTools has removal tools for single PC’s and networks.

After looking for information on Conficker and being bogged down with technical detail Colin, of Free PC Security, came to my rescue with easy to understand details and instructions in his post Conficker C – D day is coming. Thanks Colin, I should remember to visit you first when looking for such information.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Did you know that you can send YouTube videos as Greetings Cards? Either choose from one of the videos suggested (mostly New Year ones at present) or browse and choose another. Add your choice of background and your greeting and recipient’s email address and  they will receive an email advising them that there is a card for them to view.

Smores keyboard – for when you have published something you regret and need to eat your words perhaps?

phonemyphone calls your phone for you on schedule. Think of the possibilities: You can tee up a call as an excuse for:

• Rushing off to the computer when you have an irresistible urge to blog.
• Keeping the kids quiet – "shhh, you know you shouldn’t be noisy when I’m on the phone" – it works sometimes.
• Escaping from a boring meeting/date
• Your ideas?

For those of you who have a different perspective on what you read, Wordle may be for you. Create graphic representations of words you choose or enter your del.icio.us name to create a customizable (although not clickable) tag cloud. Save it to the wordles gallery with a link to your blog (every link counts!)

For those of you who enjoy taking photos of yourself in mirrors (with your clothes on!) Karen Chan invites you to join her in her Facebook Group "Doing The Karen Cheng". You are not alone, there are almost 1,000 others there to give you support in your unusual pastime.

You may not thank me for this one – The Impossible Quiz I have got as far as the duck image – sometimes fun can turn to frustration . It was too large to embed here so the image is just a link.

As a confessed internet addict, who virtually lives online, the news that an error had caused not only my computer’s C drive to be reformatted as planned, but my D drive too, struck horror into this little geeks heart. Did I ever tell you I am only 5′ 2″? D drive was not only my document store but held the backups I had done of my C drive prior to the reformat.

Being quite neurotic about the possibility of losing data, I had a few precious moments of relief when I realized that I had been doing regular scheduled backups of most of my important stuff onto my 3rd drive – daily and weekly. I could restore these files and I would be hot to trot again. WRONG. Would you not expect Windows XP backup program to be reliable? Wouldn’t you think that it had matured over the years, since the dark ages of DOS, that it would have got over its aversion to a 256+ filename structure and recognize newly created folders?

Initial relief turned to dismay as I opened folders in my restored backup to find there were no files inside them. It was like peeling the layers of wrapping paper off in a game of pass the parcel and finding no surprise inside. Disappointment is a mild word for what I felt; my attitude towards Microsoft less than charitable and my language not suitable for republishing here.

Restored deleted folders

Always looking on the bright side of life I was comforted that at least I had backed up my work folder and my server files to my 3rd hard disk before reformat and all my WordPress stuff had been copied to my laptop so that I could continue blogging during the reformat. Who needs photos when you have the subjects around you, after all my son’s Deb Ball is still fresh in memory and I have a DVD. Sob.

The good news is that my partner has weaved some magic and managed to get most of my files back from the wiped backup and document drive – most of the deleted files were really only pretending not to be there. The bad news is that files I deleted long ago have also been restored and come back to haunt me. There is no real structure to the 15,000 or more folders that have been recovered. I have to search through each one to hopefully find files I recognize.

Putting Thunderbird data back together again has been a Humpty Dumpty of a task, especially as there are remnants of about 30 versions of my mail and address book folders – the one I want and 29 backups that I don’t and they have the same filenames. I think I have got most of my photos back although some have not restored correctly and will not display.

Image: Weirdo Toys

I think I will survive this trauma but I am wondering what lack of posting will do to this blog, my rankings probably dipping. I have not been visiting others and commenting – apologies for that. If I do happen to have ongoing psychological problems due to all of this, anyone know of a therapist that deals with post traumatic software disorders? Maybe with regression therapy I will not need to restore files but will remember all the contents.

If I can bring myself to do so, I will share some of my recovery stories with you soon, with details of what I did to recover my data, as well as some valuable lessons I learned about backing up data. Only about 2000 folders to go through then I can start putting files back in their right locations so that I have a chance of finding them again. Then again I may just repress the memory of the last week completely.

The reason – It is thought that immigration to Australia commenced around 50,000 years ago, its first inhabitants arriving via the Malay Archipelago and from New Guinea via a land bridge. Subsequent to the British arrival, the Gold rush, which started in 1851, brought other Europeans, Chinese and North Americans.

After WWII Australia’s population increased rapidly; hundreds of thousands of displaced Europeans emigrated to Australia. Many more English arrived under assisted passage schemes and were colloquially called the”10 pound poms”. My own family was almost one of them. Other major points of origin were Greece, Italy, Germany, Yugoslavia and the Netherlands. After Australia’s discriminatory “White Australia Policy” was abandoned in the early 1970′s many immigrants from Asia and Africa were also able to call Australia home.

I arrived here 27 years ago from Yorkshire, England, on a working holiday and decided to stay. My father’s family were Irish. I love Australia’s for its multiculturalism; its rich diversity of culture, beliefs and experiences; My own neighbors hail from Europe, Africa and Asia. The “I am Australian” song by the Seekers sums up Australia’s rich and very long history for me. I have played it at least 5 times while writing this post.

Loz of Midlife Journey reminded me of this song in his own post about Australia Day – he talks about his own familiy’s history in our country which dates back to the First Fleet’s arrival 26th January, 1788 – an interesting read.

Colin Campbell commented “Australia Day is very like the 4th of July in the US. Great weather, lots of family and friends and just hanging out.” Thanks Colin – That pretty much sums it up.

• Wow!

• What pretty pictures
• Good Fun

The above slideshow was created using Slide. Slide provides a very simple and easy method of incorporating slideshows of various styles and image transition types into a blog. Upload your images, choose the style you want and copy and paste the provided code into your blog posts or sidebars.