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| Saturday, February 02, 2008 |
| Black Beauty Runs! |
I've spent so much time messing with my computer, and under such stress while doing it, that my biceps are sore. I worried so intensely, I slept about four hours of the 72 between Saturday morning and Monday. I freaked out so bad, I gave myself a cold.
My computer basically forgot where Windows was. After backing up everything onto an external hard drive, I spent three days trying to install Vista. I failed; the RAID setup was impossibly screwed up.
Sean, who recently inherited my mantle as "friend who knows a lot about computers," came down to Tucson on Thursday for the SuperBowl to hang out with his friend Andy. He came down early to help me out. That day, the Spurs played the Suns, Obama debated Hillary, and I was praying to turn my $2000 paperweight into my means of doing my job again. I was pretty nervous on Thursday afternoon.
We completely disassembled the machine, used some isopropyl alcohol to clean every connector. We then put it all back together - Sean did a dynamite job with the wire cleanup - and fired it up. After a few hours' work, it was running.
The Suns lost a close but terrible game to the Spurs, Obama did very well in the debat, and my computer is running. Two out of three ain't bad.
It turns out that a particular Windows update killed Windows. Now everything is back, backed up several ways, and my only complaint is that working on this until 6 AM has messed up my sleep schedule. January, a hard month, is over. Super Tuesday is coming up in a few days. I feel like I hit the reset button on my own health and mental state.Labels: computers, jobs, Obama, Sean, sick, Suns |
posted by Steve @ 6:11 AM  |
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| Thursday, January 31, 2008 |
| Not ma' fault! |
I've had the longest blogging gap of the new year. I could have posted, but I've been dead sick. What's remarkable is that I actually managed to stress myself straight into illness. The stress source? My new computer, which ran fine for about three months with some weird RAID hiccups is now a $2,000+ paperweight.
Luckily, I managed to back up all of my work (both professional and personal) onto a new external hard drive, but I've been forced to go back to my old computer. This is a good machine; it served me well and it's now the wife's. It has all the programs I need to work. But it's really like stepping out of the Maserati and back into the Volvo.
It crashed on Saturday afternoon, and I literally attempted to reinstall Vista for three days straight, trying a bewildering variety of ways to get it to install, to no avail. I will be using Seagate boot disks to check the hard drives tomorrow, then I'll disassemble the entire machine (no mean feat given how packed the components are), and retry with my good friend, Sean. He's been kind enough to come down to Tucson to help out, though the trip also coincided with his SuperBowl plans nicely, so that worked out.
I pretty rarely pray; I consider it a bit presumptuous. But man, I am praying that I can get this thing working again.
One small bright side to these clouds is that I'm forced to sit at the computer with the recording hardware, so I've recorded a few more demos, and actually started re-recording Summer, which has been waiting for that treatment for about five years.Labels: computers, Ignition, music, sick |
| posted by Steve @ 2:25 AM |
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| Wednesday, January 11, 2006 |
| A Funny Thing Happened Today no. 5: I get the impression I'm a stranger in my own skin |
I don't know if this happens to anyone else. In the midst of a very good book - in today's instance this is The Historian - I become so completely mentally involved in the literature that, after hours of inhabiting this space an author has created for me, I return only reluctantly to my own world and mind.
I feel really wierd sitting in my own skin, as though it's not my own, like watching a very boring television program. I am simply waiting for the narration to clue me in on my very strange new story. You could call it a Matrix Moment if you'd want, though that's a bit dramatic.
These moments are useful for their disassociated and analytical perspective on my life - conveying the urgency with which I need to get better (I've been sick), get some work done and maybe foremost, get a new but equally well -paid job that I do not loathe.
Of course the irony of it is that I often find the book's world a far more comforting and seductive place than my own; it is a real tragedy that this still applies when I am reading an academic-toned horror story! Its irony is that I do not wish to use that proper and analytical perspective but rather I would curl up and continue reading with my back to my life's continued decay.  | Currently reading :
The Historian
By Elizabeth Kostova |
Labels: books, movies, random, sick |
| posted by Steve @ 3:52 AM |
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| About Me |
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Name: Steve
Home: Tucson, Arizona, United States
About Me: I like to think about things, and I occasionally like to write what I think.
See my complete profile
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