July 2009 Archives

Long time no blog, so a bit of a wrap up for future-me when I look back on this and wonder what was going on in past-me's life around summer of 2009. First of all, a change in Job. Sadly my very fun stint at Layer 7 came to an end around the end of April. Blah blah economy blah blah. Luckily getting laid off is something that tech people get used to after a while and a job for a full year (well, almost a year) is something that's not all that bad. Of course, for the fourth job in a row I was there almost long enough to take holidays, and in fact was just thinking about holidays, a new big screen TV, etc, when the hammer fell. Oh well, maybe in a year I'll be able to take a holiday!

More after the jump...

Saw this post over on the flickr blog about the Duxford airshow. This was (I think) a show I went to ages ago, some of the pics are pretty cool, I remember it being a great show. There are some other links to other great pics in the pool.

If I'm wrong and I've never been to Duxford, then I retract the above.

Took the bunnies off to Elizabeth's Wildlife Rescue Center out in Abbotsford. Thanks to a friend of mine pointing me in the right direction, and a couple of phone calls I found her and her operation. I admit I am a bit sad to see them go, being cute and fuzzy and all, however, food (as my cats like to think of them) living in the same house as cats probably isn't the best situation.

I have to give Elizabeth kudos though, she basically runs the place herself, cats for a lot of animals 24/7, both the cute ones and the injured and the not so cute ones. I'll be donating as soon as I can get my hands on a real paycheck again. Also there's an open house there the last weekend in August, both Saturday and Sunday, noon to four.

Last few pics of the bunnies soon.

So this morning, 30 minutes before my alarm was supposed to go off a strange noise followed by the pitter patter of kitten feet zoomed under the bed. Seems the cats learned how to work the door of the cage the bunnies were in and were having great fun chasing one of them around the floor. Luckily it was unharmed and rescued quickly. Also they seem to be OK drinking from the syringe, which is a great sign.

A coworker at the new job pointed me to the Small Animal Rescue Society of BC which looks like a good point to start looking for a more suitable, and less dangerous, home for bun 1 and bun 2 (need better names too).

Then I got home tonight (way later than expected, time ran away and I realized what time it was just as the second to last train was leaving) to find Andrea pulling apart the cupboards in the office downstairs. Turns out bun 2 (not the one chased this morning) somehow got out of the cage (again, why?) and was either adventuring or chased by the kittens into the space under the cupboards in the office.

Ah, the joys of small-animal-in-hostile-environment ownership! More pics soon.

So a funny thing happened to me today.... Seems there were some orphaned, around two week old bunnies that needed a home, so they are here now. Below you'll see one, still probably terrified out of it's wits, looking out towards the camera from it's new, temporary home.

The home is a cat carrier with some shavings on the bottom, a stuffed toy lamb to simulate mommy sitting over them, and some greenery. Andrea also came home with some kitten milk replacement, feeding bottles, and the like.

Anyone know a 12-17 year old kid in 4H or similar who wants to bottle feed and care for the littler buggers? They're infinitely cute (iPhone shot below)!

I can only imagine what the cats will think of it...

Woke up this morning to Andrea telling me the cats think there is a mouse under the fridge. Great way to start the day. Though when you have four cats clustered around the front of the fridge, you have to figure something's up. So there's me, barely awake, shining a light and trying to see any sign that the cats are crazy or not. Nope, turns out there's a weeeee little nose moving behind one of the back legs. OK, so slide the fridge forwards and see what happens then.

Not so good. Now the mouse got himself into a small tunnel in the drywall and is trying to make it's way up the wall. The cat, convinced that we didn't understand what was going on, turned herself inside out rubbing up against the corner to let us know that this is her mouse dammit, and if we can't figure that out she's just going to turn herself inside out again.

OK, so here's me again, flashlight in one hand, butter knife i the other, and towel at the ready. You do know where your towel is right? Oh, and my fearless wife standing across the room to manage the operation. I got the idea of making a hidey-hole with the towel to convince the mouse that it had somewhere safe to go instead of the wall as I slide the knife down the crack between the drywall boards to push it down. Turned out it worked, the mouse ran into the towel perfectly, but I wasn't fast enough grabbing it and it went under the towel and around into a hole leading under the bottom of the cupboard with the sink in it.

Now at least it couldn't get out, except through a small hole at the front, just small enough I could see his beady little eyes and roaming tail. Being stupid, I figured maybe I could reach in and grab him. Being smart, the mouse simply bit my finger. Next try was a hand covered with a dishtowel, which of course meant I couldn't see anything at all.

Luckily a second attempt at the "hey, look at this safe dark place in what definitely isn't a dishtowel" ploy worked, and Mr. Mouse came out of the cupboard and ran along the edge of the kitchen until I finally managed to get a towel on him, and then my hands around the towel. He was a slippery little bugger too, and only by luck did I manage to get his tail in between my fingers through the towel to keep him from squirming out and getting free again. Andrea, still managing the operation from across the room, opted not to take a picture of my victory as the mouse was "traumatized enough already". Bah, a little makeup, hot lights and a photo shoot relax people right?

He then got his one "Get out of a horrible death by being eaten by a creature 100x your size with bone crushing jaws after being tormented and tortured for hours on end" card and was deposited unceremoniously down the bank of the creek in the backyard.

I'm thinking I really need a cat with mouse in mouth detecting cat door.

Just to explain the rules, passed down from years of cat ownership, of mice (or any other small critters) in the house. Basically if the critter is alive and in good shape (ie: can still move, squeak, or skitter), it gets freed and put somewhere safe. If not, well, the cats will have gotten it anyway. I'm just glad we got this one before it expired hidden away where the cats couldn't get them and started to smell like the last one....

• Grass cut? Check
  
• Computer updating / fixing / changing done? Check
  
• Deck chair working? Check
  
• iPod player playing my best of 80's and 90's playlist? Check
  
• Book? Check
  
• Taaaaaaaaalllll rum and coke (heavy on the rum) with ice? Check
  
• Friends coming down later for a hot dog dinner / movie? Check
  

Ok then, all systems are go for a great weekend!

Last night was a late night already, but as I'm lying there trying to get to sleep I hear cat noises, but slightly different cat noises than I'm used to. After a bit I decided it'd be a good idea to check it out, so I turned on the light. Glad I did, Bump had brought in a nice plump mouse (dead) and was lounging on the floor beside my bed playing with it, looked like she was trying to get it under the mat to give me a really nice (and squishy) surprise first thing in the morning. Mouse got taken away. Glad we found this one early, unlike the last one which was found by the "hey, what's the funny smell coming from under the bedside table" method...

OK, long, sad story coming up. Bail out now if you need to. Dad called saying his computer was doing strange things, not booting right (starting up a linux boot screen), messages about a drive failing, etc.

Oh, and Dad, this is not a reflection of you asking me to help you with your computer, but my own personal failings and reasons that I have started to wonder how I can put my socks on in the morning by myself. Since you don't have a computer right now you won't be seeing this until after I've explained in person the problems I had with it.

Anyway, you'd figure any moron with 15+ years dealing with computers and PC hardware could deal with the issues, right? Throw in a disk checker (such as SpinRite), use something to clone the bad disk to a new one, do some cleanup, upgrade everything, install all the patches and updates, done in an evening right? Heck, I even had an older USB hard drive that, when taken apart, yielded a nice 230G PATA drive to use (and being the computer is 5+ years old, with C: being a whopping 13G drive, even this small-by-today's-standards drive would be a huge improvement). Even better I even had a better (not by much) video card to put in.

So I started.... here's a list of what went wrong to start with.

• Spent lots of time mucking around and cloning the wrong drive. Cloned C: to the new drive instead of E: (clearly written on the paper that I got) which was the one that was failing.
  
• Spent lots of time plugging drives in and out figuring out which was which and what names windows (XP) would give the drives if they were plugged in and out.
  
• Finally decided to just get rid of the E: all together, re-install / move the data on E: (which was where program files were being moved to as the 13G C: was 90% full), and leave F: (digital photo storage) alone (other than re-partitioning it, as it was a 40G drive with 10G of NTFS available and the rest old linux partitions!).
  
• At some point a wayward IDE cable made it's way into the CPU fan unnoticed, and the system ran for a while with no CPU fan, until it slowly crashed and (almost) burned. Left it overnight at this point to let everything cool off nicely to stop the warbling motherboard alarm from going off and telling me the CPU was slowly sizzling itself to death.
  

Ok, finally got things all figured out, booting up on the new 230G drive, yay! Now the long and horrible task of updating everything to SP3 + patches + patches for patches + extra software + patches for extra software. New video card went in so it needed new drivers, I had to re-install some software to make sure that the now-not-there E: location was updated properly, etc. All time consuming in the waiting, but fairly standard.

Almost all done, just need to swap the new drive in and done!

Now up until now the computer had been sitting sideways on the floor, with all the old drives still in it (just in case I needed to remember where one was plugged in or something) and the new one sitting on top.

You other geeks can see what's coming can't you? Yea....

I moved the new drive just a tiny bit on the top of the case and heard a tiny little "pop" and that smell that no computer person wants to smell, the smell of the magic smoke escaping.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Now this was mid-day today, after 2 (calendar) days of working on this.

And there was no luck for me here, no drive magically working afterward, it was dead, dead, dead. Completely setup, updated, patched, and not-recognizable by the BIOS at all. My wife can attest that I had none-too-kind words for myself after that.

Did I mention that yesterday I was out at the lake with some friends and got myself nicely sunburnt? Not even a nice all over burn, instead it's all blotchy. Bleah. And hurts.

OK, back to the computer. What to do. OK, start over again.

• I found another older USB hard drive, only 160G but still usable. Nope, won't boot, dead and old. Pitch into the garbage.
  
• Last shot was a nice 500G external that I have (sorry Brian). Complete overkill for Dad, but it'll work.
  
• Repeat the same steps. Clone the drive to start.
  
• Clone done, swap cables.... drive starts to boot to windows and reboots. WTF? OK, maybe 500G is too much for the BIOS to handle. Re-jigger some things and try the clone again, oh, and there it goes again working. Odd (more on this later).
  
• Reboot, ensure it's booting the right drive, backup the bad drive to it, do the Windows Update and Patch Dance^tm. Software moving, re-installing, re-updating, etc.
  

Now it's almost midnight tonight, everything is tested and rebooted to make sure things come up properly, and it's ready for the final re-jigger of the hard drives (I've been using a magazine to keep the drive off the metal case to be safe).

OK, so the motherboard was one of the first ones with ATA100 PATA ports, and it actually had 4 IDE ports on it, 2 "standard" ones and 2 that show up to a secondary SCSI BIOS. For best performance I figure C: is master on the first ATA100, the pictures drive is master on the second ATA100, and the DVD drive is primary master on the "standard" IDE ports.

Plug it all in and boot up. Computer goes "beee woooo beee woooo". Hmm.... not good. Unplug DVD drive, computer starts booting. Weird. OK, lets boot up without the DVD in at all. Boots, windows boot screen comes up, aaaaaannnnnnd....... reboots.

Again with the screaming at the sky.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!

Another hour or so of fucking around with it it looks like something either in the form of a drive incompatibility or maybe the magic smoke got let out of the the SCSI controller. Re-do the drives so they're all on the "standard" IDE ports, reboot (pray), see it working, shut down, reboot again to make 100% sure, it boots, and shut it down and get it ready to go back to it's home tomorrow.

Yay.

Then of course there's my other buddy's computer that he wanted re-installed, so that was started next.

All's well that ends well at 2am on a Friday :)