Sunday, January 25, 2004

My erstwhile trusted TiBook started showing up a weird heat, motion sensitive hard drive problem less then 48 hours before I was leaving for the current trip, where I definitely needed to work and connect. It was a mad race to find a replacement, this 1.25Ghz AlBook, and to clone the TiBook's failing drive (I had a backup, but cloning from the previous machine with Carbon Copy Cloner and Firewire target mode had worked well for me before). This required babysitting the TiBook for several hours, shaking it to unwedge the drive when the noises indicated it was stuck again. Copy finally succeeded, but somehow user account information was not cloned properly and I could not log in. After a couple of frantic reinstalls of OS X on the AlBook, somehow I had a new admin account and I could recreate my old account. After a few other tweaks, everything seems to be working well. Time from getting the new machine to a working clone, seven hours. Phew. Now I just need to get the TiBook fixed, and I'll have a permanent backup. 5:36:34 PM

Demanding uphill (start from 9,600 ft to 12k), occasionally demanding snow (nasty wind pack, wet powder). But amazing sights, memorable powder turns in the trees, great company, excellent food and lodge staff. I'll be back. Terry took great pictures (his site is down, I'll edit in the link when it gets back up). If you are wondering about my awful skiing stance, yes, I was struggling on the wavy, grabby, rock studded windpack. 5:22:34 PM