If you're looking for larger, I would recommend the 300. the only fault or irritation I have is with the waist belt. The belt is nice for getting all the extra weight off your shoulders but on short trips when I don't use them, they sort of bunch up in my back. Not bad, but can be a slight annoyance. Obviously you also have to unlatch the waist belt to swing the bag around.

Beyond that I can carry my K10D with grip and the DA* 50-135 with hood properly attached (not backwards).
As well as two other lenses (one being 77mm wide) and three flashes. Of course a flash or two could be removed to fit another lens if necessary.
The top and front compartments allow me to carry cables, memory, lens pen, Rocket Blower, extra batteries, a handful of filters, notepad, tape and still have room for a small lunch.
The bag is deep enough to carry the 50-135 with hood off or reversed.

I find it much more comfortable than any other camera bag I have. Again the sling feature makes it so much nicer than other bags I've had.

As for processing of the image as shown I would start with the following,
1. Straighten the image. The walls of the buildings should generally be straight up and down. Maybe due to pincushion effects from the wide angle lens? (The center looks straight, but walls tilt as you get towards the edge.)
2. I would probably crop in closer. The trees and space on the left don't add much for me. If that is of interest to you, maybe think about turning it into a panorama and crop off some of the large green area at the bottom of the image and extraneous sky.
3. The color looks pretty good to me, but you might want to play with curves or levels to bring up the contrast a bit more.

Just the boxes? Why?

If you have the purchased version (not free one) Read the section of the doc on getting sharp images. It is REALLY helpful.

I spent half an hour trying to get a really bad image lookign good with no avail. Could not get good results with PhotoShop Camera Raw either)
After reading SilkyPix doc, I had an acceptable image in five minutes.

Edit: See Section: 10.1.8 Creating Extremely Clear Image
I think the big thing for me was the Demosaic filter settings, and the right order of operations.

Try restoring data from the card.

I the past I've seen where the card may be hit by static (???) and the images appear lost. It may be possible that the images are there but just no longer accessible without some effort to restore.

Data Rescue makes a good one. Try it for free. It will probably only restore a few files, but if that works, buy it (or another) and get most of your images back.

http://www.datarescue.com/photorescue/v3/index.htm

Unfortunately most everyone learns from the "success" of Microsoft. It is not rarely speed but eye-candy that sells. If it looks pretty and/or has fun sounds, people will come.
When was the last time you heard about the speed and stability of MS Windows was?

I work for a software company. My last company I worked for created a horribly buggy product... too intent on shipping it "fast" with new features. They're stance was "its good enough for Microsoft and they're making money, why should we be any better?". I think a lot of companies have that belief.

Anyway, I agree with you. The Pentax site was so bad, I looked at it, clicked on one link and never returned. What a shame.

I wanted to try to get something new (and different), but this week will be nasty time-wise. I missed one competition already, so I think this will have to do for now.

So that when they remove it, they can add a bullet point of "new features"?

Honestly I don't know why anyone would want it. I guess some people can't grasp the concept of focusing on the center, holding the AF button (or half press the shutter release) and re-composing. So they rely on the camra to guess what they want.
Actually ths would probably work well with a point and shoot with huge DOF, but with an SLR I really don't see the usefullness.

I never use it, but once in a while the wheel turns, and I don't notice for some time and loose a bunch of good shots. I try to check it every time I turn on the camera.

Of course, the manual selection has some more usefulness than auto select. But so limited in when I would use it, I don't worry about it either.