Archived News starting from 10-06-2003 and earlier
BlogThursday morning I went to startup my computer and got halfway through when it rebooted itself. Starts up again with the "Windows did not start properly" menu. No matter what I chose it kept choking halfway into the boot cycle. Since Windows XP doesn't natively support Serial ATA I have to load a driver during setup. Since I don't have a floppy drive, and it only reads drivers from floppies this is slightly inconvienient. After I get the driver loaded, setup says my partitions are of the "RAW" format and it can't read them. At this point I've spent almost two hours trying to fix it and was more than late for work. I also have a sneaking suspicion the drive is completely hosed. Fast forward to tonight: I bring the drive over to
Stavos house since he has a working computer with a Serial ATA interface. Hooked up my drive, ran scandisk, and voila, all better. My theory is the drive got overheated, but it could have just been a random fluke. If it happens again I'm saying farewell to Serial ATA and going back to good old EIDE. I included the checkdisk error below in case anyone else experiences this:
A disk check has been scheduled.
Windows will now check the disk.
The attribute of type 0x80 and instance tag 0x0 in file 0xc9f has allocated length of 0x1000 instead of 0x1c5000.
Deleted corrupt attribute list entry with type code 128 in file 3231.
Unable to locate attribute with instance tag 0x0 and segment reference 0x2000000005a7d.
The expected attribute type is 0x80.
Deleting corrupt attribute record (128, "") from file record segment 23165.
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Yes, it's true. The SCCA Solo season is officially over. The final event was held at Compuware arena in Plymouth. I recently installed my Schroth 3 point harness and Kumho VictoRacer tires on my
cougar so I had a better vehicle setup than any other race this year. Unfortunately, I didn't adjust my harness properly the first run so I wound up wasting it. The next three runs were better, but I now realize I was "plowing" through the turns (not braking enough before entering the turn). I didn't do as well as I'd hoped, but I did accomplish what I set out to do, which was wear in and get used to my new tires, and get comfortable with the new harness. Unfortunately, I have to wait 6 months before I can go again :(. At least I'll have
event photos to look at while it snows outside.
Tonight I was a groomsman in
Duane and Gina's Wedding. During the rehersal, everyone in the wedding party had discussed at what particular time Duane would most likely pass out. Surprisingly, he only had the nervous smile and remained conscious during the entire procession. It's rumored he passed gas at the alter, causing everyone close to laugh, but luckily the congregation was singing and probably didn't hear it (if it happened). The reception followed with Duane using a mechanics creeper to remove the garter. All in all a very successful wedding and enjoyable reception. I'm glad to have such great friends as Duane and GIna and was honored to be in their wedding. Here's to a long and happy marriage: <tink tink>
My friend
Stavos was recently hit with the
latest trojan horse that takes advantage of a flaw in Internet Explorer. Before we knew it was a trojan, it was quite the puzzle. Able to access any website except search engines, I blamed it on the
mercury retrograde and went to bed. Before I sleep I always read the news on my PDA and the trojan was a top story. I have to applaud the guy who wrote this one. No real damage, but definately gets you confused. I'm glad
PCWORLD had an article on it, otherwise I'd have been wondering about it all night. Since Stavos was compromised by this trojan, I have no choice but to label him a security risk and end all communications with him. Stavos, you were a good friend, and I'll miss you.
When I first moved into my house, I actually enjoyed doing dishes. I think the novelty of washing my dishes in my new house kept me entertained. Fast forward to today, and the novelty has long worn off. I now view dish duty as wasted time I could spend on other things. After seeing my mom's dishwasher installation I decided it was time to get my own. Budget minded as I am, I got a
midgrade model that does everything I need and nothing else. The installer came today and
my dishwasher looks fabulous! I immediately
loaded it up and tried it out. It may take twice as long as I do, but while it's chugging away, I'm spending my time wisely (watching TV). I love modern convieniences!
The last few weeks have been interesting in terms of weather. We've had quite a few
rainbows and some
cool looking cloud formations. Quite a few
spectacular sunsets as well. I attribute it to the time of year, but the leaves haven't turned yet so it looks surreal. Unfortunately it also means winter will soon take over, and I begin my hibernation routine.
It's tradition to visit at least one apple orchard during the fall in Michigan, so today my
girlfriend and I went to
Plymouth Orchards. We went on a wagon ride,
visited the
petting farm and bought some cider and doughnuts to share with whoever we happen to run into. Today it was my girlfriends brother, my dad, and Keith and Lindsay. Tradition complete, now comes winter.
Every year, the last Saturday in September is
Hazardous Waste Dropoff Day in Redford. Last year I filled my pickup with various chemicals left behind by the previous owners and was surprised when I showed up and 3 people swarmed my truck. They had all of it unloaded and processed before I could even get out of my truck to help. They were so efficient that this year I was excited and filled up my truck with hazardous junk I had accumulated since then. Apparently word got out better this time since it took me a full 30 minutes to get through the line. As a self proclaimed earth hippie, I always feel better dropping off chemicals instead of throwing them in a landfill. From the amount of people doing the same, I think earth hippies are becoming more and more common. Here are some photos from
check in and
processing.
Today my
girlfriend and I celebrate our 2nd anniversary. For two years she has put up with my strange friends, obsession with mechanical things, and anal personality. Anyone who still stands after 2 years of that deserves recognition. What kind of recognition is between her and myself, but unfortunately for her, the payment is to tolerate yet another year.
I finally finished setting up my
new computer. I was pretty frustrated with BSOD's until I figured out my memory can only run at 80% speed. I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the fact that the video card shares memory with the system. At any rate, it's
performance triples that of my
old system, even with the memory at 80%. It's also
smaller than my older computer, which gives me more room to store stuff underneath it. I can also
shut the door now making it completely silent. In case you're wondering, the light is from a
blue LED fan I've had laying around and finally hooked up to the side of the cabinet. The computer gets really hot so it's definately needed to keep air flowing around the computer. The cord was long enough so I plugged it right into the motherboard. I can monitor the RPM's of the fan, and it turns on and off with the computer. It all adds up to one happy computer user.
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