Rain.
It's misting out, rain is coming. Grey and quiet. Even the traffic noise seems subdued.
Just like me.
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
With apologies to The Suburbs....
Waiting, waiting....
(I know you're out there....somewhere......)
If I wanted a job in Georgia doing web development, I'd have one yesterday. Or in Missouri. Or Texas. Or.....But I don't want to move. Not Georgia (ew.), Missouri, Texas (roaches the size of armadillos!) or anywhere South.
I have a bunch of call backs to do today. We'll see how my optimism level is later....
Waiting, waiting....
(I know you're out there....somewhere......)
If I wanted a job in Georgia doing web development, I'd have one yesterday. Or in Missouri. Or Texas. Or.....But I don't want to move. Not Georgia (ew.), Missouri, Texas (roaches the size of armadillos!) or anywhere South.
I have a bunch of call backs to do today. We'll see how my optimism level is later....
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Spring Cleaning
or, huffing canned air
I neglected to mention that, as part of my sojourn into the wonderful world of Hardware Upgrades, I took the opportunity to clean my pc. Since I had the case open and in various states of assemblage throughout the weekend, it seemed like as good a time as any to start huffing the canned air.
Normally, I try to get into my cases and corral the dust rhinos twice a year. Of course, that was in the B.C. era (before cat). With the arrival of Harley on the scene, it seems I need to be a bit more diligent in cleaning my delicate electronic equipment.
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you may have read - cat hair gets EVERYWHERE. And not just little tufts of grey, dust bunny hair, mind you. Oh, no. We're talking full-on Pleistocene Woolly Mammoth-sized dust rhinos here. The plus of this is that you can simply grab them with your fingers - after wrestling them into submission (I recommend the sleeper hold - the figure-4 leg lock does nothing), pitch them into the bin and that's that.
The downside of this is that there are copius amounts of these dust gargantua, and they're EVERYWHERE. Any nook or cranny in the computer case will be filled with writhing, grey masses of dust and cat dander. What once took 5 minutes now takes the better part of an hour. And the dust/hair genetic hybrids tend to adhere to fans - which means that you have to pull, scrape, or pry the nasties off, infected area by infected area.
The fans are the worst: between regular dust, cat hair, and other nasties - these things get gunkier than....well, something really gunky. Windex on a paper towel takes off the first layer, and q-tips soaked in windex get into the nooks and crannies. Effective, thorough, but time-consuming as all get out. I made sure not to mix the Windex with the canned air huffing - the last time I did that, I ended up in Toronto wearing a duck suit and carrying a poster board advertising a tattoo parlor. Or was that last week...?
Anyway - between the hardware assembly, the cleaning and dust wrangling, and the upcoming 'old data scourges', it'll almost be like I have a new pc!
or, huffing canned air
I neglected to mention that, as part of my sojourn into the wonderful world of Hardware Upgrades, I took the opportunity to clean my pc. Since I had the case open and in various states of assemblage throughout the weekend, it seemed like as good a time as any to start huffing the canned air.
Normally, I try to get into my cases and corral the dust rhinos twice a year. Of course, that was in the B.C. era (before cat). With the arrival of Harley on the scene, it seems I need to be a bit more diligent in cleaning my delicate electronic equipment.
First off, no matter what anyone tells you, no matter what you may have read - cat hair gets EVERYWHERE. And not just little tufts of grey, dust bunny hair, mind you. Oh, no. We're talking full-on Pleistocene Woolly Mammoth-sized dust rhinos here. The plus of this is that you can simply grab them with your fingers - after wrestling them into submission (I recommend the sleeper hold - the figure-4 leg lock does nothing), pitch them into the bin and that's that.
The downside of this is that there are copius amounts of these dust gargantua, and they're EVERYWHERE. Any nook or cranny in the computer case will be filled with writhing, grey masses of dust and cat dander. What once took 5 minutes now takes the better part of an hour. And the dust/hair genetic hybrids tend to adhere to fans - which means that you have to pull, scrape, or pry the nasties off, infected area by infected area.
The fans are the worst: between regular dust, cat hair, and other nasties - these things get gunkier than....well, something really gunky. Windex on a paper towel takes off the first layer, and q-tips soaked in windex get into the nooks and crannies. Effective, thorough, but time-consuming as all get out. I made sure not to mix the Windex with the canned air huffing - the last time I did that, I ended up in Toronto wearing a duck suit and carrying a poster board advertising a tattoo parlor. Or was that last week...?
Anyway - between the hardware assembly, the cleaning and dust wrangling, and the upcoming 'old data scourges', it'll almost be like I have a new pc!
Monday, March 27, 2006
How to install a hard drive in 1,978,456 easy steps, part π:
OMG I DID IT!!!!111 one
So, Friday evening arrives, and with the blessed relief of the weekend comes another attempt to format and install the new hard drive. After yesterday's experience with Norton Ghost, I decided to try different softwares....Acronis True Image. Cnet gives it higher marks than Ghost, so once again - arrrr.....me and me parrot finds what we needs and gets to work, matey.
Format hard drive (AGAIN!!!!) - 5 minutes.
Begin the copy.....and, based on my experience with Ghost, I assume that it's going to take at least 2 hours. 1 hour later, I peek into the computer room to make sure that it's still running - and I see the message :"Cloning complete. Would you like to verify data consistency?"
Wow. It copies the disk AND does a data integrity check. This is my newest favoritest softwares, precious.
So, after powering down, I start the hardware monkey bit of physically swapping drives. While I'm at it, I decide to install the 40gb drive into the case, so disassembly and re-assembly begins. In short order, the 200 gb drive is installed as master (with the restore partition - I left it. Meh.), the 40 gb drive is installed as slave, and the pokey old 120 gb drive is now in the usb case, waiting to be wiped and reformatted.
Yay me.
In other news....teh job search has stagnated. There are a few nibbles of interest from some of the companies to which I have applied - but nothing firm or promising. I've really got to commit to completing the web portfolio...
OMG I DID IT!!!!111 one
So, Friday evening arrives, and with the blessed relief of the weekend comes another attempt to format and install the new hard drive. After yesterday's experience with Norton Ghost, I decided to try different softwares....Acronis True Image. Cnet gives it higher marks than Ghost, so once again - arrrr.....me and me parrot finds what we needs and gets to work, matey.
Format hard drive (AGAIN!!!!) - 5 minutes.
Begin the copy.....and, based on my experience with Ghost, I assume that it's going to take at least 2 hours. 1 hour later, I peek into the computer room to make sure that it's still running - and I see the message :"Cloning complete. Would you like to verify data consistency?"
Wow. It copies the disk AND does a data integrity check. This is my newest favoritest softwares, precious.
So, after powering down, I start the hardware monkey bit of physically swapping drives. While I'm at it, I decide to install the 40gb drive into the case, so disassembly and re-assembly begins. In short order, the 200 gb drive is installed as master (with the restore partition - I left it. Meh.), the 40 gb drive is installed as slave, and the pokey old 120 gb drive is now in the usb case, waiting to be wiped and reformatted.
Yay me.
In other news....teh job search has stagnated. There are a few nibbles of interest from some of the companies to which I have applied - but nothing firm or promising. I've really got to commit to completing the web portfolio...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)