After just about 3-4 weeks of zero problems, last night I had my first real, "oh no this is bad" feeling. Let me say that this may not be a 'Vista' issue... I think it could have happened with XP.

I had noticed that when I had added files to my desktop, that I could not delete them. I would get an error message stating that the file or folder was corrupted and not readable. Oh man that's a bad feeling. I noticed if I did a "shift delete" bypassing the recycle bin, I could delete file. Some quick googling produced a know issue with a corrupt recycle bin. It was a simple fix, delete the system recycle bin folder, and have the system automatically recreate it.

That didn't fix my issue.

The next thing I found was to run a disk check from the disk tools section of the "Manage my computer" section. Checking the boxes to automatically fix errors while scanning the disk. Since this was on my C:\ drive, I would get a message when initiating a scan that it could not do it on the active Windows partition, and kindly asked me if I would like to schedule to do this at startup, awesome.

Except, it never did it at startup.

I was starting to get stressed. Would I need to do a clean install? Crap, I didn't want to do that. Repair? I decided to boot from the setup DVD and see if something caught my eye. I clicked the 'repair my system' option and was presented with a ton of options, there it is... command prompt!

At the command prompt, I dropped over to the C:\ and ran C:\chkdsk /f, it asked if I wanted to dismount the primary drive, uhhhh scary, but yeah, I guess so. Then it fixed all the corrupt files, found no bad sectors, and once I rebooted back into Vista 64, all seems well.

So now why did my files get corrupted? I don't appear to have any data loss either.

Moral of the story? Sometimes there is a quick fix, it just takes time to get to it. I wanted to wipe the system, and start fresh, but couldn't bring myself to something that drastic whithout exhausting all my options.

So the first thing that almost everyone says when I tell them our house is going on the market is some sort of "ooooh man" or "wow the market is crap" kind of statement. While I agree that we are in a buyer's market, the upside for us is the house we'll be able to buy. 2 Years ago, we couldn't find anything even remotely as good as what we were living in to move to. We're in a nice area of Portland, among some of the most sought after real estate, and schools. When you have two kids, things like good schools are important. If I were living where I grew up as a kid, we'd almost be forced to put our kids in private school, at a minimum of $1,000 a month (maybe more?) is my guess.

The other thing that's great about our location is that everything is nearby. Seriously, anything you could want is within an hour's drive. Mt. Hood, the Coast, ok, Bend is like three hours, but you get the point. Every kind of shop, service, or restaraunt is very accessible and convienient.

Why do we want to sell? We don't have a back yard, a home office, or a place for guests to stay. While our home was great while we had one child, the addition of the second has made it a lot more stuffy. Some of the things we are looking for in the next place are things we already have, and a home office, back yard, and larger common areas.

Yes, the market is slow. But our house has a lot of things going for it, and while I'm trying to remain realistic (pessemistic) there are a lot of bonuses that other houses in our development don't have:

• We back to a green belt. No building back there, ever.  There are miles of walking paths.
• We have a huge park about 2 minutes from our house, you can see if from the deck.
• We have a brand new kitchen, and all appliances. Corian counters, stainless appliances.
• The house is move-in-ready. The paint is tastefully done, and other than the red kitchen (which works) nothing is crazy out of control like you see in some places.
• The house gets FIOS internet and television.
• We have a three car garage with tons of storage. There are other three car houses in our development but they don't go on the market often.

Hopefully the combination of these things will get our house moving! We're prepared to give it 4-6 months, but I'd love to sell it in a week. We have a house we have our eyes on, but they did not accept our contingent offer. We hope that house remains unsold. If it goes, and we have an offer after, it will be a tough decision on what to do.

Here's pictures of our house.

UPDATE: Here's the public listing.

Ok, I saw a Toyota commercial or something on TV, and eventually found out that it's called 'Zorbing'.

I wanna try this, it looks like a riot. Looks like we need to go to New Zealand.