That'll teach me to jump to conclusions. The hardware problem with my desktop computer turned out to be nothing more than the RAM going bad. Unfortunately, I didn't find this out until after I mistook the hardware problem for malware. I thought I had a virus that'd slipped past my defenses. I tried to reinstall the OS, but only got as far as formatting the hard drive before the problem reoccurred.

Once I realized that I didn't have a computer bug ripping through my system, the damage had already been done. My hard drive was wiped clean. Furthermore, because of the hardware problem, I couldn't finish a clean install, or even restore from my back-up copy of that hard drive. So into the shop it went. In less than 24 hours, I had a shiny new stick of RAM in place. But no OS or files on my drive. Once I get some time to spare, I can wire everything back up and see just how well this Back-up & restore program will work.

I'm glad that I have the back-up, or back-ups, as the case may be, since it would be a major pain to have to reinstall every single program I use. I'm also glad the problem wasn't something going bad in my new Solid State Hard Drive. That would have been a bit expensive. So I've got the whole drive backed up on a whopping big flash drive, the original "old school" hard drive that I took out when the computer was being built, and oodles of external drive and flash drive and CD and DVD back up media.

I could have saved myself all the trouble by simply taking the box to the shop before I started to panic. I hope the restore program works as well as the vendor said it would. I wish I didn't feel so dumb for jumping to the wrong conclusion. But I did learn something. Matter of fact, I might have just learned what was going wrong with my wife's old computer a couple of years ago. If I get time, I might just sort through my collection of RAM and see if there's something that will work in that old computer, just to see if that turns out to be its problem. If nothing else, I can pull the data off of its drives to get a few files back that my wife really needs.

All right, welcome to the new issue of Aphelion! I just know that you're going to enjoy the stories, so go ahead! I'll catch up with you soon, LOL!

BOILERPLATE:

First off, if you do the Facebook thing, feel free to join us on the Aphelion page there. The link is Aphelion Webzine. As an aside, the Editorial Mafia and I have found Facebook to be useful while we transition between e-mailing lists. Given our different locations and schedules, it's come in handy as a way to discuss production details of new issues. Sometimes there are several of us using Facebook at the same time, so it's almost like the old chat room days.

Dan's Music Page This is my promo page here at Aphelion. All the links below, and more information about the albums, are located here.

The Never Bank On A Learning Curve CD on the Create Space website. My first album, with a wide range of styles and genres, covering the past three years of my working with the MAGIX Music Maker programs.

The Second Helping CD on the Create Space website. My second album, with just as wide a range of different musical styles, showing just how much I've learned in the past three years.

Dan's Studio-D Page on the Bandcamp website. Digital downloads of the albums, or each individual song if you prefer it that way. Just click on the album cover thumbnails and you'll see a list of each song on the album. Next to the song titles are links to read the liner notes, or to download the individual song. You can listen to each song for free. There is also a link to download each entire album at one go. I cannot say enough about Bandcamp! This is an amazing website. I have Rob, and many other friends, to thank for finally talking me into checking it out.

Here are some links to pages I have up promoting my music. When my book comes out I'll add those links to the promotion page, too. So far, there are links on that page to the Create Space Preview songs, the Create Space page for each album, the Amazon.com listings, and the link to the digital downloads page.

And here's a link to my Sound Cloud page:

Dan's Sound Cloud Page where all my music has been stored for your free listening pleasure. These are not as high a quality recordings as the ones on the CDs or on Bandcamp. But SoundCloud does have the virtue of having everything collected together in one place.

Check those links out, buy a CD or download if you like what you hear. And once again, thank you for your time,

Dan all my music has been stored for your free listening pleasure. These are not as high a quality recordings as the ones on the CDs or on Bandcamp. But SoundCloud does have the virtue of having everything collected together in one place.

Check those links out, buy a CD or download if you like what you hear. And once again, thank you for your time,

Dan