Early May 2015 Status Follow-Up

As I said in my previous journal, I had some personal drawings I wanted to take care of, but I got them finished. By that time, I was able to get a Wheel of Fortune illustration finished for someone. I still have some other Wheel of Fortune illustrations I need to do for dad90, but I'll try and get to them ASAP. I also have a request for Ilovefallingcows25 that I'm currently working on as part of a trade I'm having with him.

I've been enjoying the second DLC pack for Mario Kart 8. Although I said I'm not much of a fan of Animal Crossing, I've come to admire Isabelle. She's adorable, but after racing with all the new characters, I've since been racing as my Mii in my Sonic racing outfit. All the new tracks are a lot of fun to race on.

Now I'm sure many of you who have read my previous journal have been wondering about the status of my PS3. I was able to get it fixed for $85 at a Play N Trade a couple weeks ago. It came back on Thursday, but since I had work that evening, I waited until the following day, May 1. As I took the hard drive out before bringing it back on April 21, I was told that the drive would need to be formatted upon being reinserted. So, as I turned on the system at the Play N Trade to test it (it had a TV I could hook it up to), I prepared for the worst. I saw a screen that stated the system needed to have a proper restart since the yellow light of death (YLOD) prevented a proper shut-off. After doing the restart, I noticed that the usernames of both my brother and myself were showing, a sign that the drive didn't need to be formatted after all. Checking all my data confirmed that my brother and I dodged a major bullet. After backing up some of my save data to an external drive that I brought with me, I noticed some save data could only be backed up online via a Playstation Plus account, something I never had. That's when I realized I could've lost much more data than I was expecting to lose had I needed to format the drive. So that Friday evening (May 1), I subscribed to Playstation Plus and backed up all the save data that couldn't be saved on my external drive. I plan to start a subscription soon for my brother to save his progress for some Gran Turismo and Grand Theft Auto games that he often plays.

So, this is a happy ending for both of us, but we learned the importance of backing up our PS3 save data, but yes, back in December, my brother and I had already bought an external drive for our PS3 off of Ebay in case something like this was to occur.


Finally, for my fellow ship buffs, Thursday will be 100 years to the day the British Royal Mail Steamer Lusitania was sunk. On May 7, 1915, she was off the coast of Ireland's Old Head of Kinsale when she was torpedoed and sunk by the German submarine U-20. Out of approximately 1960 people on board the British passenger liner, roughly 1200 were lost, a tenth of those being Americans. This would be the incident that turned American opinion against Germany, although the United States would not enter World War I until 1917 after the interception of the Zimmerman Telegram.

I have a drawing commemorating the centennial of the Lusitania tragedy that will be ready for submission on Thursday.