Anyway, I hope this helps somebody out there.  From sonarchist on the XDA forums: Damaged microSD Card…(this is how I recovered my Data)

…….right in the middle of a super demanding day, the message “damaged SD Card / Reformat” appeared on my Epic, when I least expected it (inopportune is the word)………… changing firmware is never without its more interesting moments, + this may or may not be a symptom (went froyo to gingerbread), however,……….. am sharing this post to the Epic community, as i sense this to be an important enough issue………..no one really knows the specific cause of sd card corruption + failure: it’s variable + always somewhat circumstantial (ie, saw it mentioned elsewhere that overheating from an overclocked cpu could cause damage as well)……………….so, moving forward I simply want to contribute as a brief description, here, how i was able to recover (most) of the files from my ‘damaged micro sd card:’

First, when i saw ‘damaged sd card / format card’ on the phone, when it became possible 4 me to do so many hours later, instead of ‘formatting’ I replaced the damaged card for a new one (pny 16gb sdhc class 10)…booted the phone everything was fine (15.91gb space available)……..as expected, no files in the SD Card………………….next:

(1) placed ‘damaged’ sd card into the reader that came w/ the device, and mounted to pc, selected the drive (followed by confirmation beep ‘device detected’ sound, then the language: ‘d:\ not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable’ came on the screen……….went to RUN and typed CMD……..from new window, I typed Chkdsk d: /r and the PC began reading the contents of the damaged SD card (most of the android zip files etcetera were there, as were a number of files w/ no content) + next i typed ‘exit’ (no quotations, just the letters) to return to the windows desktop…….OK, so now the only files missing are the pix + video mov’s (far as I can remember).

……….(2) next, to recover pix + video, from the pc desktop i opened ZARecovery (if you do not already have it go to Data Recovery Software, Solutions, Tutorials, Forum – ZAR Data Recovery and download the free recovery program from that site).

………….(3) from the ZARrecovery main page, selected sd card as device, selected ‘next’, selected ‘root’ folder for all files that ZAR was able to detect as recoverable, entered destination folder name (for transfer of recovered pix + video to PC….note: NEVER to sd card itself!), + lastly, selected ‘start copying selected files’………and that was it, closed ZAR + began viewing the content of the recovery folder to get an assessment of what had actually been recovered, and what had been lost……………..fortunately 4 me, the loss was minimal, as I tend to create backups (Nandroids, every half year; pic, videos, email attachments = pretty regularly).

Hope this helps those of you that have been experiencing microSD Card damage (from whatever source).

Remember, + not to speak to the Choir, but can not to overstate this: BACKUP…………. BACKUP…………. BACKUP………….BACKUP

Anyway, click through, and opt out if you are on Verizon.

Having the option to opt out is great! Having been opted in by default — not so great. If youre not down with Verizon doing this, then make sure you opt out as soon as possible.

via Verizon wants to monitor your web habits, if this bothers you — opt out | Android Central.

It is not that I don’t like people.  More specifically, it isn’t that I don’t like YOU people.  It’s just that, well, my social circles  don’t all overlap.

What do you do when your boss, or an associate requests you as a friend on Facebook?  In fact, it is a bit messy whenever anybody requests to be your friend on Facebook.  Refusing is dicey, and ignoring it requires a little white lie of “oh I don’t check often.”  Let’s face it, it was ok when only the current “in” techie crowd was on Facebook when it first started, but now EVERYONE is on Facebook.  My boss… my mom.  Heck I’m sure my niece will get an account soon.  I don’t always want to share the same thing with my buddy from college as I would my parents or my niece.

Google+ has an answer, which is to immediately put people into “Circles” of friends, and then allow you to share anything with certain circles only.  This fits perfectly with how I share things in my life.  Some random picture will go to my friends, my pictures of my family will go (only) to my family, and my boss and work associates can get something reasonably clean and civilized, like a picture from a new restaurant.

The reality is that my all my social contacts are not the same.  It’s not that anyone is more or less important to me, but simply the fact that the stuff I share with a four year old family member is different from those that I share with thirty somethings at a tailgate, which are different from things I share with people with which I do business.

Google+ simply fits my reality better.

For now.

edit:

A nice review by David Pogue at the the New York Times here:

Deuteronomy 18:20 “But if any prophet presumes to speak anything in my name that I have not authorized ²⁷  him to speak, or speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet must die. 18:21 Now if you say to yourselves, ²⁸  ‘How can we tell that a message is not from the Lord?’ ²⁹  – 18:22 whenever a prophet speaks in my ³⁰  name and the prediction ³¹  is notfulfilled, ³²  then I have ³³  not spoken it; ³⁴  the prophet has presumed to speak it, so you need not fear him.”

(from net.bible.org)

Of course, this passage can also be misinterpreted and lead to religious wars.  However, I do wonder if we would get a few less doomsday predictions…

More than 75 professors at Catholic University and other prominent Catholic colleges have written a pointed letter to Mr. Boehner saying that the Republican-supported budget he shepherded through the House of Representatives will hurt the poor, elderly and vulnerable, and therefore he has failed to uphold basic Catholic moral teaching.

“Mr. Speaker, your voting record is at variance from one of the Church’s most ancient moral teachings,” the letter says. “From the apostles to the present, the Magisterium of the Church has insisted that those in power are morally obliged to preference the needs of the poor. Your record in support of legislation to address the desperate needs of the poor is among the worst in Congress. This fundamental concern should have great urgency for Catholic policy makers. Yet, even now, you work in opposition to it.”

via Catholic Professors Criticize Boehner in Letter – NYTimes.com.

We’ve all lived the nightmare. A new developer shows up at work, and you try to be welcoming, but he1 can’t seem to get up to speed; the questions he asks reveal basic ignorance; and his work, when it finally emerges, is so kludgey that it ultimately must be rewritten from scratch by more competent people.

via Why The New Guy Can’t Code.

Ms. Todisco sued, and in 2007 the First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower courts conclusion that regardless of what the benefits person said, employees had to follow the plan rules.

via When Benefits Bite Back – WSJ.com.

My only question is… nobody figured this out before?

… and where did these guys get the idea in the first place?  Right.

Sexual intercourse and masturbation: Potential relief factors for restless legs syndrome?

Luis F. Marin, a, , André C. Felicioa and Gilmar F. Pradoa

a Neuro-Sono Sleep Center, Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery, Universidade Federal de São Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Received 2 January 2011;  accepted 18 January 2011.  Available online 4 March 2011.

via ScienceDirect – Sleep Medicine : Sexual intercourse and masturbation: Potential relief factors for restless legs syndrome?.

If a police officer stops you in the course of investigating some matter, can she peruse the contents of your mobile device as she might demand your identification or the contents of the glove compartment of your vehicle? Does a routine traffic stop allow access to your phone’s photos, videos, text messages, and contacts?

The gear to grab this data is widely available. Cell phone extraction hardware made by CelleBrite, for instance, can grab a phone’s contacts database, its text message log, call history, pictures, videos, ringtones, or even a “complete file system memory dump.” The Michigan State Police is a CelleBrite customer, and its routine use is raising questions about the propriety of law enforcement accessing data stored on cell phones.

via The gadgets police use to snarf cell phone data.

Finally, it may be time to encourage some young people to forgo graduate education and enter the workforce. Some companies actually prefer to hire recent college graduates—or even undergraduates—because they believe that PhD students are not well-prepared for real-world jobs. Although this point of view is still somewhat rare, and having a graduate degree does open some doors, it might be wise to encourage students to consider their options before they jump into a PhD program with dreams of a tenured professorship.

via The PhD problem: are we giving out too many degrees?.