I ran the installer for open office all seemed to be just fine all the way through the installer to finish. Then the fit hit the shan. I started to get error messages all over the place from Palm Background, Entourage etc. I noticed the hard drive was churning away more that I thought it should. When I went to the hard drive to retrieve a utility program I noticed I now had 3GB extra storage on my HD than I had Before the Open Office Install !!!!! WTF! I began a massive hard shutdown, Yanked the Cord pulled the battery (Pismo 500). On restart I discovered that ALL my applications that I have installed were deleted. This situation seems to be only confined to the directory of application that I created for myself  "Applications Mine" & its sub-directories (this is where I was installing OO). I keep all my apps in a separate dir. & all the OS installed apps in the true "Applications" folder. Preferences and document seem to be intact. To add insult to injury even Open Office has been deleted. My system has been Rock solid for 3 years, I'm confident that this was the OO installer. Anyone else have this happen, Any suggestions, Help?  In a related topic what's the best way to back up your HD