Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

I did a really dumb thing.

Yesterday my backup failed, because of a device I/O error. I assumed (really badly) that the error was on the backup drive, and so proceeded to reformat it - losing all my backups in the process. My logic was that after I had reformated it I would try and run a fresh backup and if it failed again I would replace the disk.
It failed again, but this time I realised it was not the backup drive that was at fault, but one of the drives it was trying to backup.
I realised this because it was the drive that had all our music on it, and I was having trouble playing music, followed by even more trouble browsing the drive.
I should have been a bit smarter. This was the last of three disks that I bought all in one go from one shipment, same size and model, all 500GB Western Digital drives (I know, I know - WD are crap). The other two had failed within the last 3 months and been replaced. I just hadn't gotten around to transferring the data off this disk.

I am constantly running  a lot of applications, and am using the quad core and 2GB RAM that Vista will let me use (out of the 4GB installed) pretty heavily. I frequently see the cores drop into 80-90% use. RAM usage is often over 90%.

Right now I have running:

File Management

CuteFTP

Windows Explorer (2 instances)

Browsers

Internet Explorer 2 open tabs

Firefox 89 open tabs

Java game Settlers of Catan (playing a game with Judith and Miranda while eating lunch and working and writing this)

Particls - newsticker scrolling

Communications

Outlook

MSN MEssenger - 2 conversation windows open

Yahoo Messenger

Skype

8hands

Our main web server failed on Christmas Eve. I sent an emergency SMS to the techs and they started work right away. It took 30 hours to fix! A raid controller card failed on the server and once it was replaced the entire raid array had to be rebuilt.

This site only came backup about 5 minutes ago. 

Thanks goodness the techs were available to work on Christmas day - I am, so thankful to them for that! 

Its very hard to work when the power keeps flickering. We are in the middle of storm season - lightning strikes and thunderstorms are common at the moment. Our car got damaged by hail the size of ice cubes. We have had a laptop fail and a UPS blow up! Fortunately both are under warranty.
Hopefully I will get an uninterrupted afternoon and evening of work with no more storms today. (All our pcs and network equipment are protected by UPS - Uninterruptible Power Supplies)