| |
 |
Monday, February 23, 2004 |
Ouch and %*^#@%$</a>
So this morning I was on IM with my friend Hemesh in Bombay, when I
started hearing some little clink sounds coming from the laptop. Like
the guy in the milk ad, I said, "this can't be good." I cleared some
space on my server, and started copying the My Documents folder to it.
Alas, what I should have done is gone into that folder and first copied
the higher priority stuff, because it was only a few dozen files into
the copy (and 244 minutes remaining), when the clink noises became more
rapid, and finally the laptop bluescreened. Attempts to boot the
machine got it as far as the first progress display in XP, but that was
it.
A bit later in the day Tony and I drove down to Fry's in Fremont, and I
found a 40GB (well, really 38) Hitachi drive for $125. I'm reloading
XP, Office, etc. etc. on the machine now. The way these things work is
that you spend a day or two trying to get your life back together, all
the software installed, etc, and then for the next several weeks keep
running across programs you forgot you relied on. And then there's the
issue of registration codes, serial numbers, etc.
You lose more than just the data you actually lost. You lose the time
you spend putting things back together in the short term, then there's
lots of little incremental bits of time lost over the next two weeks.
My loss of data is bad, but not totally severe. Because most of my
client work is on a mySQL server, or web server, that stuff is still
there, of course. I did lose some recent work on scripts that I hadn't
backed up, but some big work was saved because I backed it up to the
client's inhouse server a couple weeks ago when I was in there.
But think of it now: isn't your work worth the cost of a backup program
and a medium on which to store the backups? I've been down this road
before (over 20 years, more often than I like to admit) and still get
bit from time to time. At Frye's they had some Hitachi 7200 RPM 200GB
drives for $99 after the proverbial rebate. Sounds like money well
spent, if I hadn't had to spend $125 on this new laptop drive.
8:36:26 PM Permalink
|
|
The theocrats' stealth attack on the courts
. What do the Ten Commandments, gay marriage and Janet Jackson all have in common?
All three are symbols, for the religious right, of "everything that is wrong with America." The fact that a judge was prevented from having the Ten Commandments placed in [Orcinus]
10:28:50 AM Permalink
|
|
How Dell Thinks They've Made The World A Safer Place. While this has been joked about on various mailing lists and websites, the folks over at Silicon.com are now really making fun of Dell for asking their "big, dumb question" to anyone trying to buy a computer in the US: asking users whether or not the computers will be used with weapons of mass destruction. As you might imagine, if you actually want to buy your computer, it's best to answer no. Of course, folks involved in such production probably know this too and aren't likely to feel compelled to be truthful (and, also, are unlikely to be ordering directly from Dell). However, as the article points out, the situation in the UK is slightly different. There, they point out that they will not sell to those working on weapons of mass destruction (or genocide!) "...without the prior consent of the US or competent EU government." It certainly makes you wonder how they define "competent." It also makes you wonder about the "competency" of whoever put these questions on the site. Why bother?
[Techdirt]
10:23:17 AM Permalink
|
|
Bill of Rights Pared from 10 to 6
A Republican initiative that went
unopposed by congressional Democrats, the revised Bill of Rights
provides citizens with a "more manageable" set of privacy and
due-process rights by eliminating four amendments and condensing and/or
restructuring five others. The Second Amendment, which protects the
right to keep and bear arms, was the only article left unchanged.
Calling the historic reduction "a victory for America," Bush promised
that the new document would do away with "bureaucratic impediments to
the flourishing of democracy at home and abroad."
"It is high time we reaffirmed our commitment to this enduring symbol
of American ideals," Bush said. "By making the Bill of Rights a tool
for progress instead of a hindrance to freedom, we honor the true
spirit of our nation's forefathers."
8:55:37 AM Permalink
|
|
© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.
|
|
|
|
|
