Recovery

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So I found a bunch of the video’s that I thought I lost. I still have the video tape originals for most of what I didn’t recover. that is the good news. the bad news is that I only found 30% on backup’s.

My Application backup CD’s also had some error’s on certain program’s. I think they were older versions of stuff, so I am not worried that much. The down side is that I have to go out onto the internet and get ISO’s for Red Hat, BSD, etc. They are gig’s and gig’s of downloads that I need to do again. I will see if I have any of the missing stuff at work.

This recovery has taught me some things. One thing to note is that burning a CD or DVD as backup does not always work. I was able to recover most of what I did have on DVD, but some stuff gave me errors on the restore. I am going to keep everything I have on two different disks. I will sync them regularly. I have wanted to do that in the past but never had a problem with my DVD and CD-ROM backups.

Data Loss

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I may have made a huge tactical error. I went to reinstall windows XP on my desktop at home today. I have 2 drives in it. A 18 Gig 15,000 RPM SCSI drive for the OS, and a 180 Gig IDE drive for all my stuff. So to reinstall XP I just formatted the SCSI drive and expected to just have the data stay safe on the second drive. I have done it before. Always no problem. Well the problem I realized after it was too late was that Windows trys to install on the first IDE drive it can find. It doesn’t matter what you set your system to do. I wanted the SCSI drive to be the master. It didn’t care what I wanted if an IDE drive was present. I lost everything. The correct way to do this was to have removed the IDE drive and built windows. I didn’t figure that out until I lost all my data.

Now I have backups. All my personal files (documents, photo’s, music, etc) is on my mac and safe. I also did a DVD backup 2 weeks ago. What I did loose was all the shows I pulled off Tivo and didn’t have a chance to burn to DVD. I also lost any programs I downloaded and didn’t get to DVD. The last time I did that was the end of July 2003. I am bound to have lost stuff that has changed since then. Not a catastrophic mistake, but a big pain in the ass. I also lost tons of backups that I had. I was doing a project where I took all my old backup CD’s and put them to DVD so I didn’t have so many disks lying around. That project is bust now that all the copies on the hard drive are gone.

I don’t know why I am so calm about this right now. I truly don’t know what really needed and lost.

One think I do know is that I am going out tomorrow and getting a 200 gig firewire hard drive to put my stuff on. I am not taking any chances again. I have been pondering buying one for a while, but now I am going to do it.

If this was at work it would never have happened. Why am I more careful with other people’s stuff compared to my stuff? I guess I cannot get yelled at for messing my own stuff up!

OK, now I am a little pissed that I screwed this up. Not much stuff is lost forever, but what pisses me off is that it will take me months to get everything and organize it the way it was. I think that is what pisses me off the most.

I am now making a DOS bootable disk so I can wipe the large drive again so it doesn’t have an OS on it. Then I can remove it and build my computer with the SCSI drive in it and then insert the IDE drive back and use it as a secondary drive. if you are asking why don’t I just use the IDE drive as my primary drive, the answer is that it has more space. I need it for my stuff. the 18 gig drive is large enough for my OS and applications.

Sleep Mode On A Mac

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Do Apple Powerbooks have a hibernate mode? I put my powerbook to “sleep” yesterday morning and ended up not using it till the train ride home last night at 10:30PM. It had run out of power while sleeping all that time. Not sure if the Powerbook is screwed up or if that is what is supposed to happen.

The Many Uses Of An iPod

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I am seriously thinking about using my iPod to shuttle data back and forth from home to work. It saves me from bringing a laptop home if I don’t want to one day. I need to see if my iPod that is setup to use a Mac will work as a hard drive if I plug it into a PC. I don’t think it will.

It would be cool to use it as a drive. I have about 2 gigs free, and if I filter what music I put on it, I can free up more room.

Treo 600 Rumors

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So the new rumor is that the Treo 600 is going to be available for GSM this monday. that is what they said about it last monday, but hey I am sucked into the hype. They won’t be in people’s hands monday anyway. It will take days if not weeks to ship them out. That is what happened with the Treo 270.

Until it is released I am using my current Treo 270 all the time now. I am forwarding my Verizon phone calls to the Treo. I have not had many problems with reception. Sometimes I don’t get calls when I get good signal, but I am not sure how often that happens. I need to look into it.

Projects Going On

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We are still working on our monitoring phone call system. The company that makes the software thinks they have an idea of what is wrong. I should have more information today. I always love buying stuff that just does not work!

I think I finally am motivated to look into Proxy server software. Too many things are going on that I say if we had a proxy server we could figure this out, or we could prevent this. It is a pain to know a tool will work, but you just don’t have the time to set it up.

I found a flaw in the Windows 2000 Pro VMWare image I am using. I built it when I was learning about VMWare so I made the partition size too small. When I try to download large files to it, I get out of disk space warnings. I need to build a new one today. Howard also is trying to get a Red Hat 9.0 VMWare image. I found one I did that works, but I need to see if I configured it properly.

I want to do a VMWare image of Free BSD 5.1 also. I am not sure what to call the OS installs in VMWare. I guess an “image” of a disk is a close enough description of what it is.

Halloween

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I thought about dressing up in a costume for work today. Then I remembered that I was 29, and I never came up with original costumes when I was 19, so why start now. I am curious to see what my sister is doing for Morgan. Not sure what my plans are for tonight. I heard about a few parties, but I don’t know what my plans are. My cousin’s wanted me to travel to Jersey for their Halloween party but I don’t think I fit in with their married with multiple kid suburban family type friends they will have over.

Poker Was A Bust

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We played poker tonight at Dan’s place. Gus, Molly, Miguel, Keith, Rajive, Daniel, Glenn, Dan and myself played. It was chaotic at first since Rajive, Keith, & Glenn never really played texas hold-um before.

I ended up loosing. I got ahead quick with a hand that I almost didn’t realize I won. Then I lost it all to Molly with a pair of 9’s. I knew I didn’t have a hand that could win very much but I went all in anyway hoping I had something better than her. I didn’t and I got out. I was only down 30 buck so it was no big deal. When I left Dan, Glenn, & Molly were left. Molly had a huge amount more money then glenn so I assume she was going to win. Dan had almost nothing left but was assured 3rd place.

I had a good time. Gus is planning on doing poker next week at his place. I am down for that again. As my friend sean once said about going to a casino and loosing money. “we go skying and pay $50 for a lift ticket. I am spending the same amount of money in the casino. It is the cost of entertainment for a day.” now that works when you loose $30 bucks after a couple of hours playing poker. It is not valid when you blow $500 in 30 minutes at a casino. Thankfully that has never happened to me! Sean has had his share of crazy wisdom.

Recomendations

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I was backed into a corner to make a recommendation on a laptop to buy. My brother in law’s mom wanted one and she said she trusted my judgment and wanted me to decide for her. After 3 conversations where I said I don’t like to do that and I like to make suggestions only, she convinced me to take the plunge. That means this decision will come back to haunt me later. She is nice, and just want somethings that works. I recommended the Apple ibook 12″. It fits her requirements and I think it will be easier to use than a windows machine. I like mac’s now, but I would not normally recommend it to a windows person. I did for her since she used mac’s in the past and had good things to say about them.

Lets just hope that she is as happy with an iBook as I am with my Powerbook.