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| The worst possible news |
Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 7:19 pm 
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I can't believe it. You guys must be psychic. All of the talk about whether or not I had backups when sending my computer in for upgrades was amusing, but I never took it seriously. After working with computers for over 20 years, I've actually never had a hard disk die.
When I called the computer store to go pick up my computer, looking forward to it being finished, I was told that the hard disk was dead. They got the new system all put together and when they transferred the hard disk and hooked it up, it just started making clicking noises during the BIOS disk detected. I went down and looked at it myself and we put it back into the original case and it still cannot even detect the disk...it just clicks like it's trying to read something and failing.
They claim that transporting a system can do this and that they have seen disks crash like this many times before. Since the BIOS won't even recognize the drive, there isn't even any way to run any recovery software. The only way to recover it is to send it to one of those data recovery places that take the disk apart, and that costs something like $1500!
So, I'm screwed. They let me buy a new drive at cost and are not charging me any more hours for installing Windows, and it's hard to really blame them too much because I can't think of anything they could have done themselves (unless they dropped the drive or something) to cause this. Of course, they are covered by a service contract that says they are not responsible for data loss, so there really isn't anything I can do about it.
What does this mean? Other than the fact that I'm furious and totally pissed off at the whole world right now, it means that I get to spend the next week reinstalling my entire development system.
I have been really careful about making backups of really critical files, such as the zMUD and zApp source code. I made a ZIP archive of my entire CVS tree before I went on vacation in December, so all of that critical source code should be fine.
The problem is my email. I never thought to back up my local email files. Most of the registration codes for various software are stored there. I have paper copies of some of it, but not all of it. And I've lost every email that was sitting in my various folders waiting for attention. Some stuff is in our common IMAP server folders. Hopefully most of the urgent stuff. And I've got a backup of the entire disk from one year ago when I upgraded from Windows 2000 to Windows XP, so I've only lost email from the past year. Still, there is a lot of stuff in there that I'm going to miss.
Of course, the current version of zApp on the server expires tomorrow and there is probably no way I'll be able to recompile and rewrap a new version before that happens. Last year when I upgraded to Windows XP it took about a week to get all of my tools reinstalled and configured, and even then I had the old disk to grap files from that I had forgotten. I still have that disk intact from last year, but it's still going to be several days before I can even compile something.
And there is lots of other stuff that is just really going to annoy me. For example, when I designed the new zMUD logo using Fireworks, I have now lost the original Fireworks file. So there is no way for me to resize the icon or anything like that without recreating it from scratch. Same with the new Zugg Software logo. I've got the GIF images on the web site, but all of the original artwork in Fireworks files is gone.
And anything that was still on my computer from the old web site that I hadn't copied to the new web site is gone. I don't think there is anything that isn't on the new web site, but one example is the eMobius Features Matrix. That was an Excel spreadsheet, and then I saved it as HTM and copied it to the web site. But the original Excel spreadsheet is gone. Not to mention everything else in the "My Documents" area, which includes a lot of personal letters, SCA stuff, etc.
I really just feel like my whole life has been trashed. That's the trouble with these new huge disks...there just isn't any good way to back up the *entire* disk. So you try and backup the really critical stuff (like source code) and then realize that in fact there was a lot of other important stuff too.
I went ahead and paid the extra money to get two ATA drives (120GB each) in the new system and will set them up in a RAID array so that they mirror each other. This should prevent any problems in the future and is what I was planning to do in another year or so when I had more money.
I really wish I understood why I'm having worse and worse luck with computers. This month has been a total mess. Everytime I get ready to go back to work on zApp, something else like this happens. I'm *really* getting depressed by it.
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[Post your comment] Comments: 16
Last comment: Thu Feb 17, 2005 1:13 pm by Kiasyn
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| The end of computer problems |
Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2005 9:36 pm
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I finally got fed up with my development system today...
Remember a couple of months ago when we had the wierd power problems and my computer would just reset itself without warning? Well, it's been doing it again. Today I was in Delphi and had been programming for a couple of hours when it decided to reset itself. Poof...3 hours of work lost!
I couldn't take it any more. I just can't develop on a system that is going to do this. As much as you try to remember to save your work periodically, it seems to know when you haven't saved and resets itself at the worst times.
So, I took the system down to the local computer store. We have a really good independant computer shop near our house that builds game systems, repairs computers, etc. I'm getting the case, power supply and motherboard replaced. This *should* be an end to the problems with this system.
I *know* that the USB ports on the old system were dead. I had to add a PCI USB card a few months ago to fix that and get my PDA to synch again. I already replaced the UPS this past week and that didn't fix it. So, my guess is that either the power supply was also damaged or that the CPU is somehow getting too hot and shutting down the system to protect itself. The fan on the power supply was definitely starting to make some bad noises now and then.
I decided it would cost more to try and debug and fix the current system and it's cheaper to just get a new system. Replacing the motherboard and case and keeping the rest of the peripherals isn't as expensive as I feared.
I paid a bit more to get a motherboard that has dual ATA connectors so that I can do RAID disks in the future. It also has the latest 64-bit Athlon CPU socket. It will have a 3100 in it, which is a *total* overkill for my development system. Should be something I don't have to replace for a *long* time. My current CPU was a early 500Mhz Athlon (about 5 years old). Of course, I also had to get new RAM for it.
Ended up costing about $600, which is a lot for me right now, but I think worth it for getting a reliable development system again.
Unfortunately it means another 2-day delay in work on eMobius. I'm typing this blog entry from my gaming system right now. They will do the rebuild of Windows for the new motherboard, reapply patches like SP2, etc. So, when I get the system back on Saturday, all of my software and settings should still be intact. Cross your fingers on that! This will actually be a good test for this computer store to see how good they are.
So, I'll be spending the next couple of days doing on-paper design work for eMobius.
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[Post your comment] Comments: 3
Last comment: Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:19 pm by Humpton
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| Wireless madness |
Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2005 10:40 pm
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Here's a situation you probably don't see everyday...
I had gotten a new wireless keyboard/mouse for Christmas (the Logitech LX 700). I hooked it up to my game system downstairs and once I found the hidden XML file where all of the secret settings are stored, really feel in love with it.
(as an aside, the stupid SetPoint software that comes with Logitech's new keyboards and mice is pathetic. It doesn't let you redefine most of the keys on the keyboard, for example. It tries to auto-detect all of your media players and let you select from a popup list and then sets all of the media keys. Turns out there is a user.xml file in your Documents and Settings/Application Data/Logitech directory that you can edit manually and have a *lot* more control and redefine most any key. If I had time, I'd write my own program to let people better customize their Logitech keyboards. It's a shame that their programmers/managers seem more concerned about the "theme" of the SetPoint application and how pretty it is instead of caring about actual functionality.)
Anyway, I decided to go ahead and get one for my work system too. The key spacing was just slightly different than my current development machine, so it was hard to make my fingers type properly (at least, that's the justification ;) really I just want the media controls on my development machine too!). So, last week I bought a second keyboard. But the scroll wheel on the mouse has these buttons that activate when you move the scroll wheel left and right for horizontal scrolling, and the right-scroll button seemed to be broken (didn't click, didn't do anything). So, after getting it all hooked up I needed to return it.
Well, it was a lot more trouble to wire the power and ports on my Development system just because of the cabinet it is in...so I didn't really want to take it apart. On the other hand, my game system just sits on the floor, so it is a lot easier to work on. So, I returned the mouse and keyboard from my development system, but used the received/recharger and power adapter from my gaming system.
Yesterday I returned it and got a new one. Works great. I hooked up the new receiver/recharger to the game system, but didn't really have time to mess with the system at that time. I came up and ran through the Connect process to get the new mouse and keyboard working with the receiver up on my development system.
Then, for the last day or so I've been working on my development system just fine, programming, fixing web pages, etc.
Today, I went down to play on the game system and found all sorts of dialogs and popup windows on the screen. The last thing the system had done was play all of the movies that I had loaded onto disk for the Sci Fi convention this past weekend. There were a bunch of Windows Explorer boxes open in various subdirectories of this big "media" drive.
I noticed to my complete dismay that the media drive had 150GB of free space instead of the 17GB of free space it had this past weekend. Sure enough, most of the movies I had saved to disk were gone!!
Fortunately, I own all of the DVDs themselves. I had just put them on disk for the convience of playing them as one big long file during the convention so I didn't have to switch disks every couple of hours.
It took me a while to try and understand how this was possible. All I can think of is that the wireless receiver on the gaming system was picking up mouse and keyboard commands from the hardware upstairs on my development system. I didn't think their system was supposed to have that kind of range, but it's possible. So, while I was programming yesterday, I was also sending keystrokes and mouse messages to the gaming system. Who knows what kind of damage this did. I still need to investigate the system further to see what else is wrong with it now.
So, I continue to be plagued by bizarre computer problems. I just seemed to be cursed when it comes to computers sometimes. It never would have occured to me that something like this might happen, so this serves as a warning to anyone else that buys wireless gear...make sure to immediatly go through the Connect process so that each system gets on their own channel or else you might have some wierd interference like this. Especially in office situations.
Can you imagine controlling your fellow worker's computer from your own desk? I can think of all sorts of evil things that can be done with that.
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[Post your comment] Comments: 3
Last comment: Fri Jan 28, 2005 2:17 am by Chiara
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| Why? Microsoft, Why? |
Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2005 5:27 pm
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Warning, yet another Microsoft rant ahead...
WHY does Microsoft need to try and control *everything* on your computer? I've always been leery of the "My Documents", "My Pictures", "My Music", etc folders. Why should the operating system try to tell me how to store my files? In most cases I have ignored this. For example, I put all of my MP3 files in a common shared disk rather than using "My Music".
Why am I complaining about this? Well, remember a couple of weeks ago when I mentioned that my gaming system crashed because of a memory failure. And remember that when I first ran the Windows Recovery, it crashed too?
Well, in the process of reinstalling Windows, Windows decided to DELETE ALL OF MY PICTURES! Yes, I was still using the "My Pictures" folder to store ALL of my pictures from my digital camera from the last FIVE years. Because the camera software defaulted to storing them in this directory and I never thought to change it.
When you reinstall Windows, your My Pictures folder gets overwritten with the stupid sample pictures that come with Windows. And everything else is GONE! Since this happens apparently near the beginning of the reinstall, the process of installing Windows and then installing all of the patches like SP2 end up overwriting lots of disk space.
I found a great data recovery program called "Recover My Files" that does a nice job of searching for all deleted files and letting you preview image files before recovering them. Out of about 1,000 pictures I was able to recover about 10.
Fortunately I found an old backup on Chiara's computers that has about 80% of the pictures. But pictures from the last 2 years are gone gone gone.
So, take my advice and NEVER NEVER store ANYTHING in any folder called "My something", like "My Pictures". You are just asking for trouble down the line. Store your files in your own directory names so that Windows doesn't know about them and can't do anything with them.
And yes, My Documents was also cleared out. Fortunately I didn't have anything important in there (that I remember) since this is my gaming computer. My Music also got cleared out, so if I used the defaults for my media player and for ITunes, I would have just lost all of the music that I have paid for. As I said, fortunately I had stored all my music elsewhere.
I'm sure this is also related to losing most of the entries in my Start/Programs menu after the reinstall.
Yep, as people have mentioned before, it's time to buy new disks and start some backup systems. But I wanted to post this to warn other people so that they don't fall into this evil Microsoft trap.
I've always HATED the way Microsoft stores data files and program settings. When I used to do sysadmin stuff I was always changing the location of things like My Documents to try and separate Data from Programs. Microsoft obviously has never understood the fundamental difference between user data and program data since it's nearly impossible to separate the two in Windows.
Days like this I yearn for the more staightforward and logical structure of *NIX where stuff in /usr was user data, and that is what needed to be backed up, while /bin had the program data and /etc had all of the configuration and preferences. And it was easy to just mount /usr on a separate disk if you wanted. Sigh...some days I can't believe we put up with this Windows crap.
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[Post your comment] Comments: 3
Last comment: Thu Jan 20, 2005 10:46 am by Rainchild
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| Zugg's Low-carb thread |
Posted: Mon Jan 17, 2005 8:45 pm
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Chiara and I had a long talk about our health a few days ago. We are both very large people. I'm close to 300 lbs (although I haven't had the nerve to get on a scale for over a year). We both feel bad all the time, seem to get sick easily, and just don't have much energy. We also eat very poorly (cookies, donuts, snacks, etc).
Chiara has studied all of the low-carb research in the past, but was never able to implement any of it because it's very hard to change your diet for the long term if your partner isn't also willing to change. We were watching a show on the Food Network talking about Low-carb and it's benefits and that started our discussion about our own health.
While losing weight would always be nice, my main motivation for this is to just feel better and have more energy. I'd really like to have more "brain power" and energy when working on eMobius this year. And I'm tired of being sick all the time. So, I'm jumping in and giving the low-carb lifestyle a try. For me, it really just means giving up snacks and sweets. I'm not a big bread or pasta eater normally anyway. Rice might be a bit difficult to give up (I've been eating Chinese food all my life), but I love fish (I can still have sushi without the rice) and meat.
Chiara and I are doing this together. She has always been a great cook and now she can cook something that we can both eat, instead of trying to cook herself a low-carb meal and making something different for me. Also, we have gone through and cleaned out the house so that no temptations are left.
I'm going to use this blog thread to post my progress, in case it is of any help to anyone else.
Right now I'm into Day 3 of the "Induction" period, where you limit carbs to about 20gm per day for a two week period to get your body switched over to fat-burning instead of carb-burning. I'm having sweet cravings at night and my energy level is pretty low. They say that this reverses itself in a couple of days and that I'll soon have lots of energy and few cravings. I hope they are right!
Actually, today has been better than yesterday already. I woke up feeling pretty good and was able to get a good start programming the scripts for the zMUD icon bidding system that I'll be releasing this week. And I'm not feeling nearly as hungry as normal. I still feel like my blood sugar is too low, so I don't think my metabolism has switched over yet. But it's only been 2 days.
Anyway, cross your fingers. I'm really hoping that this works as well for me as for others that I know.
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[Post your comment] Comments: 101
Last comment: Fri Aug 08, 2014 9:03 pm by Chiara
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| Zugg's Blog
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Zugg's official personal blog where he will post various rants, discussions, ideas, and other potentially interesting (or not) stuff.
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Occupation:
CEO, Zugg Software Inc.
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Location:
Colorado, USA
Interests:
MUDs, MMORPGs, Programming, Woodworking, D&D, SCA
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