[ADXA] Z81D South Sudan is now confirmed - sorta

[WB5JJJ]

Unfortunately, they don't use LoTW.

Got the confirmation on eQSL this morning and went to ClubLog and the
contact was confirmed there as well.  Requested DIRECT QSL card for $3.00.
This seems to be the norm lately.  No LoTW or delayed by 6mo to a year
before uploading.  The DXers are taking a page from the airlines playbook.
Fees, fees, fees.  Or at least that is the way it WAS prior to the
Coronavirus situation.

Speaking of that.  It appears that all the cruise lines we have grown to
accustom to using for trips will NOT be able to receive the
stimulus packages since they are foreign flagged.  Only about 5 cruise
ships fly Old Glory and should be eligible.  What goes around, comes around
(to bite you).

Hope everybody is doing well and staying home (if possible) and in front of
the radio.  My routine has not changed much as I'm not one that did a lot
of external socializing, even before the self isolation was mandated.
Still looking for ND on CW for Triple Play.  And no, did not see one over
the weekend on BW or FOC.  Waiting on a couple others to confirm on LoTW.
They are a month or so behind on their uploading.

So, all of this is not much of an inconvenience for me except that I can't
go out and eat or shop in some stores that I frequented before.  My pantry
is pretty much stocked, even before all this happened, but still go to
Neighborhood Market about once a week to top off items used.  Yesterday
afternoon, it was almost a ghost town inside.  An employee said that "you
just caught us at a good time".

Now a bit of sad news from here.  Spoiler Alert - happy ending.  I was
getting an item off a kitchen cabinet shelf and a large can of Progresso
soup managed to get dislodged and it came down on the keyboard of my poor
little open Acer laptop sitting on the counter.  Screen came on, mouse
moved, but nothing else worked.  Rebooted, and NOTHING.  Opened it up and
listened to the HDD up close and could hear it spinning, but no head
movement was detected.  Probably the shock knocked it off it's mount.
Slipped in an SSD (which I was going to do someday anyway) and it found a
non-bootable device.  This was a good sign.  It was alive, sorta.

Plugged in my Acronis USB Restore stick and was able to restore the little
guy to normal operation in about 15 minutes or less.  I back up ALL my
computers (3) and laptops (2) using Acronis every overnight.  This has
saved my bacon so many times.

I've run backups since the 3.5" floppy days, where it took 15 or 20 of
them, and this was done at least once a week.  Then I moved to 250mb tape
cartridges, which took 4 or 5 and a LOT faster.  Finally to external USB
drives and like here at home, to my NAS server.

BACKUP, Backup, backup.  I do a complete system image backup each night and
it takes from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on the machine.  A single file
can be restored in seconds from this image, if needed.  And so much faster
restore than using an incremental or differential backup way.

73's guys, Stay safe.

-- 
George - WB5JJJ


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