August 31, 2005

Follow-Up On Disaster (Not Louisiana.)

Yesterday I did a bunch of research into resurrecting blowed-up disks and found some excellent advice on making a bootable CD with disk utilities for resurrecting/repairing/recovering a drive. Following the directions, I used BootCD to build a disk image with some repair utilities and burn it to CD. I started the machine last night with the CD (BootCD does an excellent job—I highly recommend it), and ran DiskWarrior again, with minimal results—whatever I did to it, this disk is toast. I decided to settle for recovery, and ran Data Rescue X overnight to scan the entire disk thoroughly. This morning, it presented a detailed report of the entire disk and several options for recovery, which is a godsend. We may lose some files, but it looks like the majority (knocking on wood) are still present and accounted for; I just need to get them off the drive and onto a clean disk.

Update:

The secondary (newly built) disk I'd copied all the original data onto looks to be in reasonable shape. I threw it in a FireWire enclosure and it popped right up on the desktop of my powerbook, which is is a Good Thing. I'm going to wait until I get my hands on the new iBook with a Superdrive, buy about 50 DVD-R's, and back the whole thing up manually.

Posted on August 31, 2005 10:11 AM | link to this entry | Comments (2)

August 30, 2005

Such Bad News.

In a chain of events starting with the demise of a perfectly healthy G4 tower, we've been operating with some sick equipment here in the office at Idiot Central. After that tower died, I picked up a used G3 and transplanted the drive, thinking it would get us through until we could purchase a better machine.

Some flaky behavior and odd crashing convinced me that this was the wrong tack to take, so I freed up another drive, formatted it cleanly, and installed a happy new operating system. The other night, I daisy-chained both drives inside the tower and transferred about 100GB of information—pictures, music, application files, freelance files, etc. onto the new drive, and rebooted.

Neither drive wanted to come up, so I popped in DiskWarrior to straighten out any problems with the drives. What I found last night is dire, indeed. DiskWarrior is choking on the volume of bad data on the (originally fine) disk, and it can't make heads or tails of the "new" disk. I have a few options at this point: Freak out, which is why I'm sitting here writing this and not screaming at the wall, call drivesavers, which by some accounts can cost upwards of $2,500 (and I don't like the idea of sending my disk away to a company with no available privacy policy), or just quietly give up and start over from scratch.

I don't know what happened, or how this got so bad so quickly. I didn't do anything I haven't done before, like opening the case and switching drives around, or resetting jumpers. I'm stumped, and frustrated and scared, because this represents a significant amount of our history in peril. (All our pictures prior to 2005 are backed up and fine. All my freelance work is based off my Powerbook. The majority of our application copies are backed up. But the music collection...oh, crap. And I'm sure I'm forgetting other important data that could be gone forever.)

There are actually a few more options I have in the home-remedy area; TechTool and Drive10 are available, as well as some other utilities that may be sucessful in tandem with DiskWarrior. I'm going to try them first and see if I can't get the data off this disk before I really panic severely.

I didn't need this.

Posted on August 30, 2005 8:43 AM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

August 29, 2005

No Time.

Drove to Hampstead and looked at some kitchen stuff this weekend. Pretty pretty cabinets. (Struggle To Resist Self Immolation Moment: standing in the stupid K-mart buying paint, on line behind two annoying, slow, rude women yelling into a cellphone, while the Carpenters sang Top of The World.) Came home and painted, painted painted. Succumbed to temptation and watched Sideways on DVD. Good movie, uncomfortable-making. Sunday spent shopping. Hunt for discounted grill at Target thwarted by policy of not holding items between stores: drove to local store, then to store on other side of beltway to be told the last grill was sold 25 minutes prior to arrival. Gave up, shopped for Cauzzis. Visited with babies, changed diapers, huffed baby smell. Yummy fresh baby smell. Returned home, scared up dinner, attempted resurrection of backup drive: "Bad boot sectors found". Up until 1PM freelancing, working computer mojo to no avail.

Posted on August 29, 2005 3:41 PM | link to this entry

August 26, 2005

- Whew -

This morning, my powerbook didn't wake up from sleep. Hitting the Power button didn't restart it either. I popped the keyboard up to see if anything was whirring inside (It's had the strange habit sometimes of waking from sleep but not sending power to the screen, easily remedied by closing the lid and waiting for it to go to sleep again) and got a lovely whiff of burning hot electronic components. Thinking the old girl had finally given up the ghost, I began to panic, realize I had no current backup strategy for my email. Before completely freaking out, though, I pulled the battery and replaced it with one of the spares on my desk, and tried the power button. Thankfully, the Mac startup chime rang out and disaster was averted.

Given the fact that I'm planning on that new iBook next week, though, I think she's trying to send me a signal.

Posted on August 26, 2005 3:22 PM | link to this entry

August 25, 2005

Allah Be Praised.

This afternoon, I signed the documents for a Home Equity Line of Credit to finance Kitchen II: A Contracting Odyssey, which will be staged in a limited (I hope) run at our house this fall. We have an appointment with a kitchen consultant on Saturday to begin the process of picking out cabinets and drawer pulls and countertops and all the other assorted epherma, and it feels good to finally be on the road (after much foot-dragging, hand-wringing, research, and correspondence.)

I'll most likely be documenting the process here or someplace close by (I've been toying with the idea of another sub-weblog on this site with updated information on the house renovation progress, but that would take time that I don't currently have to set up.) from start to finish.

Posted on August 25, 2005 2:10 PM | link to this entry | Comments (9)

August 23, 2005

Hallway Painted.

Just so you don't think we're sitting around eating bonbons all day, here's a picture of the upstairs hallway with the new paint job. Apologies for the color shift- it's a little too blue here.

Posted on August 23, 2005 3:51 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Taking The Bus.

Here's a model I just spent the last day and a half building. It's 335 polygons, and the texture map is 128x128px (it's meant to be one of a hundred vehicles in a city scene.)

I'm happy with it—it's probably the best model I've built in the last couple of weeks.

Posted on August 23, 2005 2:49 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)

August 22, 2005

Creeping Ennui...

Not much to report around here lately; you can tell the summer blahs have got me firmly in their grip. Jen and I got a bunch of crap done around the house this weekend—the hallway is now a lovely shade of green called celadon, which is light enough to be soothing but muted enough not to send us into fits of homicidal panic. It's an excellent transition from the downstairs to the upstairs, and provides as neutral a divider for all the other rooms as possible outside of gray. There's a teeny little hummingbird hanging around Jen's butterfly bush outside the kitchen window, the first one we've seen all year. And we finally got to enjoy the first tomato from the garden on Sunday, which was a treat.

I'm also about a day or two away from finally walking into the Apple Store and buying a new iBook. One more check (hopefully tonight) and I'll leapfrog five and a half years into the future...

Posted on August 22, 2005 5:01 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 18, 2005

Close To Home.

Driving through Catonsville last night on our way to pick up some dinner, Jen and I found a crowd of people outside the library holding signs, flags, and candles. They were having a rally to support the lady in Texas, who has become a lightning rod for protesting the war (finally, somebody is a lightning rod.) I've heard all kinds of stone-throwing from different people saying she's using her dead son's memory to get on TV, make a political point he wouldn't have wanted, et cetera. I don't know about the dead kid or his politics, and I don't know about the woman's politics either. I do know that anybody in the United States has the right to say whatever they want, and it's about time somebody started making noise (hello, Democrats? where are you?) I used to think that people who had rational moral beliefs and the experience to back them up would triumph over those who don't, but the 2004 elections killed any remaining idealism I once had where that was concerned. For that reason, I'm glad she's making a stand, politics and axe-grinding aside. It's about time this country got its conscience back.

On our way back, we passed by again and I honked the horn while Jen waved, and we got a bunch of whistles and cheers from the assembled crowd. Jen's response was different than mine (She can relate the story to you better than I) but it was a bittersweet feeling for me.

Posted on August 18, 2005 12:02 PM | link to this entry

August 16, 2005

Madness...

Posted on August 16, 2005 4:22 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 15, 2005

Oh, Swell.

I'm not sure how to feel about this story. Should I be happy that the area is experiencing a boom in renovation and growth? or should I be sad that "2/3 of the home sales were to investors, who don't plan to live in the houses?" Or the auctioneer reminding investors that there's no rent-control in Baltimore, "so you can raise the rent whenever you want?"

I'd like to think that more people moving into the city and surrounding areas will boost the tax base and make things a little better.

Posted on August 15, 2005 2:30 PM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

Whole Lotta Nothing.

This weekend, I installed a cieling fan in the bedroom, and that was about it. Seriously, that's about all we got accomplished this weekend. It was so friggin' hot, Jen and I just tried to find the coolest places in the area and go there to stand around without melting. We're looking for a table to go in the hallway to put keys and wallets and stuff on, as well as a couple of lights, and our tastes are pretty specific. (long, uncomplicated, with a shelf along the bottom, in a medium stain and good quality wood.) IKEA was about a 9 on a 10 scale of cool, although we didn't buy anything worth noting. The Towson Mall was an 11, and we couldn't find anything we liked there either (altough Jen found a $20 bag that fits her portfolio perfectly and matches the color of her business card). The Columbia Mall was a 10, and Restoration Hardware had bupkis as well—they seem to be all over the bed linens these days.

I also took Jen up into the cornfields of Pennsylvania to look at a '67 Scout, which was in better shape than any other truck I've seen in the last five years, but not quite good enough. Jen helpfully pointed out that a new fiberglas tub for the truck I've got would be cheaper than this truck, and her logic made plenty of sense.

A Sunday inspection of the antique shops in Hunt Valley also found nothing, besides hit-or-miss air conditioning and very fancy furniture (too fancy for us.) We finished off our search at the new digs of Home Anthology, where we didn't find the table we wanted, but had to walk away from fifteen other things that looked real pretty. We returned home to hole up in our bedroom with a copy of The Incredibles on DVD and plenty of cold water.

Posted on August 15, 2005 11:11 AM | link to this entry

August 11, 2005

Tales From The Hood.

Last night I took my wife out for a birthday dinner. One of the things she's been craving a lot these days are Maryland crabs, and we've had to put off indulging while we dig ourselves out of the financial basement.

There's a place down on Main Street that used to be a dive bar for locals. Many moons ago we stopped in with some friends for a beer, and the old fellow behind the empty bar had to unlock the door to let us in. We had a choice of beer in cans (his exact reply when we inquired about the selection was, "We got everything. Bud, Bud Light, Coors Lite, Miller, and Miller Lite." As if all other beers had ceased to exist.) and little other input—the kindly fellow continued smoking and kept the volume on the TV up to "ear-splitting". The sparse selection of liquor and wood panel decor reminded me of the old-time neighborhood bars in Canton that seemed to cater to the same fifteen or so pensioners when I first moved there in 1996. By 2001, most of them had been sold and converted into some form of yuppie martini bar, closed, and reopened again. (The rest were converted into highly coveted corner-unit residential housing for Hummer-driving meatheads.)

I kind of miss those old-time places, with their hand-lettered signs for coddies and fries, cheap domestic draft beers, and baseball games on the TV. One of my favorite memories of Canton, in fact, was the community response to local sports. The night I remember in particular, I was busy constructing the porch off the back of the house, and listening to the Ravens game on my B/W portable TV. After a long drive, the Ravens scored, and I heard cheers rise up from all around the neighborhood through open bar doors and kitchen windows. My little house didn't seem so small anymore—it felt like I was in a community, and that, I guess, is what city living used to be like back in the day.

This local place was bought out a year or two ago and remodeled into a neighborhood restaurant/bar with a nautical theme, and now it offers a selection of local seafood served by a phalanx of bored-looking hootchie cheerleaders. Normally I dislike vapid sorority girls, but the crabs have been excellent each time we've sampled them—full, clean, and heavy with Old Bay. In fact, they use so much Old Bay at this place, you have to shovel the overflow off the table into a bucket. That's tasty eating. They do crabs, and do them right, and that's pretty rare these days outside of the city. They've kept the overall feel of the place pretty original in the bar area, and as we waited for a table we sat at the bar in front of the Orioles game, tolerating the smoke for the promise of tasty shellfish. Soon, we were sitting in front of a dozen steaming 38's and dove in with abandon while the place began to slowly clear out around us. As we walked drowsily back home in the evening cool (and before Jen's contact lens rolled up into the back of her skull), I was thinking that felt good to have a neighborhood bar again.

Posted on August 11, 2005 2:12 PM | link to this entry

August 10, 2005

Happy Birthday, Baby.

I love you, shmoopy.

Posted on August 10, 2005 5:23 PM | link to this entry

August 8, 2005

Entourage.

I haven't seen the actual show (we don' have the HBO), but this clip is sheer brilliance.

Posted on August 8, 2005 3:48 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Briefly...

Million Dollar Baby: Worth every Oscar they gave it. Great movie.

Hitch: That rarest of species: the funny, watchable, engaging romantic comedy.

Our house: Not nearly enough progress as I'd hoped, but it's getting a little closer. There's a coat of primer on the back atrium windows, the attic window above the stairs, and on the fascia board over the peak of the atrium window. (That was an interesting feat of acrobatic skill, hanging my stupid ass over the side of the roof to slap a coat of paint on a board. It's funny how fearless I get with heights as the summer progresses...)

Life: We spent Saturday evening with R&K on their deck in Canton, overlooking the neighborhood, harbor, and city skyline. As always, it's great fun to relax with the two of them and enjoy cocktails on the cheap. The pair of all-weather couches and comfy pillows up there is a testament to their excellent taste—sitting on their deck is like being in a private club. Jen and I spent last night poring through the IKEA catalog over furniture we can't afford. How coincidental was that?

...back to work...

Posted on August 8, 2005 11:58 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 4, 2005

Set Phasers On Kill.

I got a pile of spam from some asshat—"aaa@aaa.com", at 68.23.148.214—linking to a bunch of shitty epinions and other ad sites today. This was on top of two other douchebags who tried to game my site to link back to someplace else earlier in the day. Stephen had written something a few weeks back about installing a plugin for MT called spamlookup, which promises to help screen comments whenever the shit starts flying. I don't use Trackbacks, which is one reason, I think, that I haven't been hit harder in the past, but I guess it's only a matter of time for everything. I'll report back when I see some results (if any.)

Update: I got eighteen more hits from this same dick over the course of the last 12 hours, from varying IP addresses. Spamlookup only caught one, which looked different from the rest.

Posted on August 4, 2005 3:36 PM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

Somebody Else Said It Better, So...

The past couple of weeks have been kind of slow here at Idiot Central as well as elsewhere on the web. It's not that there's nothing happening and we're lounging around in our underwear watching reruns of Dr. Phil and swilling lite beer; both Jen and I are stupidly, numbingly, unaccountably busy. It's just that I'd like to write about something other than the color we painted the hallway last weekend, or the eggplant growing in our backyard, or what we had for dinner last night.

I realized last night that I've been working like an absolute retard since the end of spring and I have nothing to show for it, except a pile of debt. I'd like to say that our brief sojourn to Ireland was paid for, but the harsh fact is that it was put on credit, and I feel that credit hanging over my head like a noose. (I don't regret going, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat.) I dislike debt about as much as I dislike foreign objects in my eye, pro wrestling, and tequila hangovers, so this situation has me a little stressed out. My lovely wife listened to my worrying last night, and was remarkably understanding and calm about the whole situation. I suspect she's just as tired, worried, and concerned about all this crap as I am, but she's learned how to keep me from completely wigging out. Thanks, baby.

It's not like we have a Ferrari in the driveway, or a plasma-screen TV, or closets full of clothes—I'm currently wearing a threadbare shirt I've owned since high school and a five-year-old pair of shorts—I've just been socked with dumb one-time bills ever since we got back, and it seems like I've been writing newer and more expensive checks every day. And that shit is getting old.

Perhaps, then, it's fitting for me to post these pictures I took a while back of a house in Ellicott City: The owner has covered the outside with handmade signs (and some of you may know that I have a certain love in my heart for homemade signs) talking about Jeebus, his government, his neighbors, and other assorted subjects. I don't know what the whole story is, but I present our own local oddity for your viewing and reading pleasure. Maybe this guy has the right idea.

Posted on August 4, 2005 10:13 AM | link to this entry | Comments (1)

August 3, 2005

Klytus, I'm Bored.

Dear Internet:

You're putting me to sleep.

Love,
Bill

Posted on August 3, 2005 3:43 PM | link to this entry | Comments (5)

August 2, 2005

And Your Dog Rules, Too

Driving to work this morning, I passed a Ford pickup, driven by an older man with a receding hairline and a beautiful border collie in the passenger seat. Normally, that would have been enought to put a smile on my face, but there was something else. It's very unscientific, but I'd have to say here in Maryland, about 3/4 of the pickup-driving crowd sport a big fat "W" sticker somewhere on their truck, something I find it hard to understand. So it was with great humor I noticed the bumper sticker on the back of this particular truck:

DRUNK FRATBOY DRIVES
COUNTRY INTO DITCH

Thanks for that, Pickup Truck Man.

Posted on August 2, 2005 10:23 AM | link to this entry | Comments (3)

August 1, 2005

What I Did With My Summer Vacation.

That area above the porch roof is now blue, and the three ghetto windows have been scraped and glazed. This is the second-to-last major section of siding that needed to be painted, and these windows are probably in the worst shape compared to the rest. For some reason, there were never any storm windows installed on the atrium, so the windows took a beating. Next up is a good priming and then two coats of high gloss enamel.