Troubles rebuilding a mirrored array

One of my Western Digital Caviar Black 1tb hard drives failed on me. It is part of a 2 drive mirrored storage array that I used to save everything worth saving, relying on the redundancy to save my bacon should equipment failure occur.

In this, it worked well. The existing drive had everything I saved, and Western Digital was fantastic, their RMA process is a joy to use. However, rebuilding the array caused me some troubles.

Once I got the new drive, I backed up what I could from the one good drive to another drive, just in case (good thing too). For some reason, I had taken the drive out of the array, which I think caused me this trouble. I installed the new drive, took note of which cable went where (so I thought), and proceeded to use the onboard RAID controller to create the new array. I think I may have chosen the wrong drive though when starting the rebuild, as now I have a shiny new 1tb of blank, unpartitioned space in my mirrored array. Thankfully what I lost wasn't terribly important, mostly game backups and other nicknacks, I saved the irreplaceable pictures on another drive as well as my Mac mini just to be safe.

However, I will be much more careful in the future should this happen again, and I will probably do a little more digging to see what the proper procedure is for replacing a drive in a mirrored array.

Lifted weights today...

I figured I need to give my thighs a rest today after biking yesterday, so today was weight training for my arms. Followed my Dr's advice and just did as many reps as I could 3 times for each exercise. They're a little tired but I'm feeling good this morning.

I also decided to take the stairs today. I made it up 5 flights to my floor, then realized I had forgotten my ID badge to get in. Fortunately my wife was able to let me in.

Biking, day 1.

Started a new work out regimen today. I've lost about 10 lbs so far but I hate walking with a passion. I used to bike 50 miles a week and was at my skinniest then (I also wasn't eating nearly as often, mostly due to lack of funds), so I figured I would give biking a try again.

I made it 3 miles, which wasn't too bad actually. Legs are a little weak but not too much so, and I feel like I got something out of it. The morning was beautiful, lower 70's, and very pleasant. Since this was the first day out, I didn't know what to expect but now that I have a goal to shoot for, I can try to push it a little further every day and see how much farther I can go.

I hate 50% moons

Seriously, the fishing in FFXI when the moon is at or near the 50% mark. It's completely unbearable, 5-8 no catches in a row followed by 3 monsters. I get they want us to go find other things to do but come on...

I’m back!

I’m back in the game and I’ve decided to try to resurrect my blog.  I’m not sure what direction I want to take, but I know I want to post so we’ll see where this goes :)

Crafting in FFXI - Sample Video I made

The video is an example of how to craft in FFXI. You get crystals from monsters defeated when you have your nations Signet active, or you can buy them from the Auction House. You then use the crystal in combination with items (recipes are available online or from your crafting guild NPCs) to create new items. In the example below, the crafting animation shows what a High Quality (HQ) synth looks like. Depending on the level of the crafter's skill and the level of the recipe, you can potentially create HQ items or in this case, more than one item.

Getting Started in Final Fantasy XI

Found a couple of good starters guides:

General Starters Guide
Starting guide specific to Windurst