House of Jorob

Update: The Meteor is still Glowing

Well, so much for it being easy.
It's still simple, but it ain't easy.
Here's what's up with the gaming box so far:
Using a second SATA-drive PC'a regedit32 to load the old drive's registry hive and editing it didn't work. When I put the old drive back in the original chassis, same problem.

As if the changes didn't take.

Ok. Round two.
Bring in a second SATA drive and install it on the gaming box.
Then copy the partitions off, loading them onto the 2nd disk.
Then copy them back to the original disk.
During one of these copies, retarget the partitions to the proper drive letters.
I got as far as the 2nd drive installation tonight.
Then I found I didn't have a 2nd power cable to the SATA drive in the packaging for the drive. Had the data cable, but no power. Actually it's not the cable, but the adapter/converter. Little two-inch thing that connects to the power supply line at one end and the back of the HDD at the other.

I have to find a partitioning utility, too. Not going anywhere near Partition Magic again.

The laptop's HDD is completely gone. Have to put a new one in there.
Another job, another day. First is to get the gaming box back up.

Jill is going WOW-nutz. Hasn't played since the system blew up.

Okay, who put the meteor under the couch?

So first my main gaming box blows up.

I kind of helped it--I was using Partition Magic and somehow something went wrong.

Really wrong.

One minute I was trying to move roughly 10GB worth of free space from one partition to another.

Next minute I was looking at a flashing cursor on the screen after the required reboot.

And more flashing cursor.

And more.

Oh boy.

After about 5 hours of forensics, I finally got a reading on the disk--my C and E drive letters had been changed.

Which means Windows has no idea where Windows is, basically.

I'm bringing the drive into the office, see if I can't get the drive letters back in play. It ain't easy to change the name of the system partition when things are working right, let alone when all blown to hell.

Incidentally, this is the machine I blog from. Lost a lot of posting time, there.

Today, my wife calls me at the office.

"Honey, what's it mean when the computer buzzes when you turn it on?"

Then she booted the laptop, and held the phone up close.

"clik-clik-clik-clik-clik."

I'm running SpinRite on that drive right now.

Deep scan, looking for damage.

Been running for one hour, thirty five minutes.

Time Remaining on the job: 2,589 hours, 50 minutes.

For real.

I think the drive is screwed.

Two machines down in less than five days.

Later on tonight I turn off the lights and look for radioactive waste under the couch.

Hooray. Larry Stroup knows my email address.

I should push a building on him.

The other day, my email account started getting daily and twice-daily email from ForteBuilder.

Who the hell is ForteBuilder?

From what I can tell, FortBuilder is a bunch of people who scrape the Internet for email addresses, load them into a mailer program, and send daily emails.

They call these people "Paid ForteBuilder Members."

Many of these Paid ForteBuilder Members are industriously at work helping to make me richer by putting Pre-Enrollee after Pre-Enrollee into my SuccessLine.

I'm so fortunate.

I have over 5,816 people in my SuccessLine.

And any time any of them upgrade to Paid ForteBuilder Member status, I get a bonus.

Too bad the only way I can collect my bonus is to upgrade to Paid ForteBuilder Member status.

During the current weekly deadline cycle.

Which ends Thursday.

For $19.95.

I'll get free product, too! Worth $50!

Just sign up and place my first order.

From Larry's website.

Then I get to build a website.

And scrape email addresses.

And send notices about SuccessLines and free product and Paid ForteBuilder Members.

How can I miss.

I can't wait to embark on this new pyramid in my life.

Er.

Period, I mean.

Ignore the flap; find the plot

I just found out I'm a bit of an oddball when it comes to reading.

I found that out the other day at the office.

What I do, when in the bookstore or library aisle:

• I pick up a book.
• I open the cover.
• I read the first couple of pages.
• I like, I take the book home.

Apparently, there's a whole other world of readers out there who read the front flap copy. And make their decisions on it.

Hell, that's no fun. I never read flap-stuff.

First, the author never writes the flap copy. So there's no sense of the narrative.

Second, half the time the flap unveils a couple of key plot points, trading them in an effort to get you to buy the book in the first place.

I like to ride along with the author, giving them between 50 and 100 pages to set up the book. I find that also give me the chance to adjust my own reading rhythms to the author's.

Can't get that from a flap.

Staring in wide-eyed amazement.....

It's October!
There's a giant black hole swallowing half of Missouri! There's an electron-creature wire-walking across the St. Louis power grid! There's a black hole on the ground, swirling and sucking in buildings and monuments!
And Judd Nelson!
Must be Sci Fi Channel, land of incredibly bad one-shot horror and science fiction films!
Actually, I like Sci Fi channel. They carried Farscape, they continue with Stargate Atlantis, and they brought Battlestar Gallactica back to luxurious life. They're running Lost reruns for four hours a clip on Monday nights.
And every October, Sci Fi does a 31 Days of Halloween thing that brings gems like Black Hole to the air.
There's a fine art in appreciating bad movies.
I'm glad Sci Fi lets us indulge.

Bookshelf: Mars Life

Mars Life
Ben Bova
c 2008

I burned through this in four days. Classic science fiction, set against a backdrop of social upheaval.

Jamie Waterman discovered cliff dwellings on Mars. The resulting explorations yielded an ancient race's footprints through Martian history, a history cut short by a catastrophic meteor strike.

OK, so what? Bradbury wrote the consumate Martian stories almost half a century ago.

Ah, well now.

Factor in the political victories of an ultraconservative religious movement bent on installing what amounts to a theocracy in the White House.

Stir in an anthropologist whose past includes exile from his university post and an unproven rape charge....and put him on the red planet. Along with Waterman's exotic wife. And 200 other Mars scientists who face a complete shutdown of their research when the funding for the Mars program is cut off.

Yep. I thought so too.

Like I said, I finished it in four days.