Frankenstein PC, or back to life from the dead

Slowly, the pc is coming back to life. The external hard drive is now all better, and all the files, as far as I know anyway, have been recovered. Next week, we'll take a stab at the old C drive. On the downside though, IE7 seems real quirky, slow to load some pages, and the CD-RW drive looks like it's gone. At first, it would only spin at about half speed, and when I installed the Roxio software, it wouldn't recognize it. After a little tweaking, it was fine, burning cd's at 50x, and then, with no warning, it refused to recognize any disks. So now I suppose I need a cheap replacement, and off to look I go.

On the bright side though, my hat's off to R-Studio, the software that saved my kid pics. You can download the demo for free, run it, and see what it finds and can recover. Then, if you want, buy the license and let it go to work. I did, and so far, it's been flawless, and easily recovered over a quarter million files for me. I am optimistic it will do the same on the old hard drive, and will know in a week or so. Meantime, I have to fix the CD-R so I can back up more data, and not go through this mess again.

Away in a manger

So of course, when the press stories come out today that Brittney's kid sister, a mere 16 years of age, is knocked up, the jokes immediately come to mind. Last name Spears, for one. You look at those girls the wrong way and the get pregnant, for another. But keeping the family name alive is much more than that for many, and a show I caught the end of tonight hit that point home hard. A Canadian couple had a kid who suffered from some sort of extreme dwarfism. I can't remember the specific name, but suffice it to say that at 2 years of age, this girl weighed 8 pounds. 8 pounds. Both my kids weighed more when they came off the assembly line. And I was thinking, what sort of hell did these parents go through, you know? Sure, a lot of people tie one on before they throw it in, and though the news of a confirmed pregnancy is a shock, it's not unexpected. And most people plan somewhat down the unknowable road, their ideas of what having a kid will be like way of course from what it will ultimately be, but at least somewhat in the ballpark. And yeah, you hope for health, hope you don't have a retard or some deformed spinal case. But I'm not sure anyone considers a case like this girl. To see the weird conjugation of a 2 year old that is so small, so lightweight, it was, well, in a word, fucked up. I may complain about material matters, like my hard drive, or the car, or whatever, but I can't imagine walking down that road.

Why the internet can suck

Well, just 2 days after the hard drive went south, I found out my e-mail address had been phished. So if anyone gets a bad e-mail from me, sorry. Part of the problem is I had just renewed the antivirus software from Eset (the best AV on the market), but the renewal info was dead on the old HD. It was this afternoon when I logged onto the internet portal of Frontier to send a message, and noticed every time I tried to create a new message, there was already an identity (not mine), and a message body. Frontier's support is real nice, using a live interface, and it took about 3 minutes to solve the problem. And a quick call to Eset got me my info, although I am still waiting for the scan of the HD to finish before I can instal the AV software. Should be done tomorrow. For now, I'll just change the password daily.

The problem is, well, the internet, and the punks out there who scam and hack and whatever. It reminds me of a time when I was a kid in Grand Central, waiting for a train to go back to Connecticut. Or maybe Rochester. Anyway, this con artist came up and sold me a bill of goods about this hot album that had all these name players on it, like Santana, Clapton, George Harrison, and others. Being a dope, I paid too much for what turned out to be a horrible collection of songs by who knows. In any event, it's that burn, of being had, of not being able to just do something without getting bothered, that is magnified in the internet. A million billion times. Or so. Time to get a job as a pool boy on some island somewhere.

Now the cookies mock me

While the hard drive is in ICU, I took a break to get some Chinese food for lunch. I am apprehensive, as my history with fortune cookies has not been so good as of late. AM I being paranoid? You be the judge. Today's cookie quote is:

"There's no problem that cannot be solved over a green tea ice-cream."

Though I, and perhaps my hard drive, would beg to differ, I can only see this as the cookie mocking my circumstances. I wonder what it is that I have done to offend the cookie gods, and what it is they are looking for in return. I am too freaked out to think normally. Frankly, if you though cookies were after you, you'd be a bit nuts as well.

not so happy holidays

I will be laying low over the next week or so, as the hard drive went south on the pc, and I am trying to recover the data. It looks to be a slow process (should take a few days for the external hd), but so far the results are looking promising. A word to the wise - if you need something you have on your pc, back it up. I should have known better, since I've been telling people to back up for years, but in this case, even the external hd has been affected, so there you go. Although I will live even if everything is gone, it would be nice to keep the 6 or 7 years of kid photos.

Say it ain't so, Joe

So baseball players are taking steroids, or have, or human growth hormone, or whatever. Wow, what a fucking surprise. Who would have guessed that a chance to make millions playing a kid's game would have engendered profiteers. It's no different from, say, Halliburton, or Blackwater, firms that muscled in their way to make money off a war. Provide a path to an easy buck, and someone will find a shortcut. If only the Hall of Fame reflected it's occupants. Imagine - "while not on the field, Babe Ruth was constantly getting his dick sucked for the price of an autograph," or "Ty Cobb loved to keep the negroes in their place, going so far as to . . . " but that's not the American way. Let's gloss over the particulars, and instead, lean heavily on acts that don't matter. Which is sort of a 180 degree turn. Sure, Babe Ruth whored around like crazy, drank to excess, and did all sorts of things outside the diamond. Contrast that with Pete Rose, who played the game, but oops, bet on a few. Seems the extracurricular karma is out of whack. But now, Bud "I've got a small dick" Selig, is all charged up to nail the current batch of drug runners. You know what he should to do hurt the players - make all tickets $2.00. Cut players' salaries. Teach them the hard way. It won't happen, but it'd be nice. Imagine, taking a family of 4 to a major league game, and getting out without spending 300 bucks.

When Things Go Wrong . . .

they tend to multiply. At least in my case, anyway, or it seems that way. Take this morning, for example. The kids are sleeping in late since they got to sleep too late the night before, and still have homework to do. So the day starts off behind. I go to check the news and weather before they get up, and bam, the satellite is out. Check the switch, it says, and no matter what diagnostic test I run, it's out. Great. Kids get on the bus, I decide to clean bathrooms. Nothing like the smell of bleach in the morning. Since I stink worse now, I figure the treadmill is the next stop. It starts off slipping, like the motor is shot, but after a few restarts, seems okay. I actually jog a whole mile at 4.3 mph. Do another walking a little slower, and then decide, well, while I cool off, I'll toss in some laundry. Come upstairs to check e-mail, the doorbell rings, a friend delivers a holiday card, and after she leaves, I hear this grating sound. Coming from downstairs. The washer apparently couldn't handle the comforter it has done so many times before, and the motor coupling broke. Looks like a somewhat simple fix, but the part price is confusing. You can find one on e-bay for $2.50, but a local store has them for $43.00. On a hunch I go to the Sears site, and type in the part number, and lo and behold, they have them for 16 bucks. So now I have something to do tomorrow. I just hope nothing else breaks. Oh, and one more thing went wrong today - Ike Turner died.