Pilot's Log

Just before New Year's weekend, I caused a circuit to overload on Rather Manor's box and it took down the hard drive on Precious.  It took a week to get my computer back, and the shop installed a new hard drive with some data recovered from the old one.  Today I bought an external case for the old drive; Precious can recognize that something is plugged in, but not what it is, so that doesn't sound like a good sign to me.  I think I'll need professional help, but I can't afford to get any at this time.

...Yo ho ho and a pitcher of tea.

Got an external case for the hard drive of the long-departed computer FrankIntel's Monster today. And the old drive still seems to work. I hooked it up to Precious, got my Aidfile Recovery Pro running, and it was recognizing old data...

...but wouldn't actually start recovering the data without me bubbling in my activation key to Recovery Pro. I thought I'd done that years ago when I obtained the program. My options now: wait till Giveaway of the Day re-offers it and get a new key that way, or pay $70 to Aidfile for a new license to the program. Or hope that one of the OTHER recovery programs also works and has a valid activation key in place.

RUM-inating on the theme for a while.

Kool & The Gang, "Too Hot"

Knoxville hit an ALL-TIME high temperature today at 105° F/41° C. Seven generations of records and this broke every single one.

All I can do is stay out of the sun, drink lots of beverages and somehow keep my Precious and its peripherals from overheating.

What happened was that after I'd done some work converting the Armor suits, I noticed that I had skipped one of the later Technical Readout books that I have in my collection. So I got out some ledger paper sheets, jotted down the converted facts and figures on 56 here-to-fore "forgotten" 'Mechs, and was all set to bubble them into my Database files--

--Only to find that not only does Precious lack the program that the files were created using, but the only other program I have for database work, OpenOffice.org 3.2, doesn't recognize the .WDB format. "It's not a bug, it's a feature" say the Internet voices.

So you are saying, "Well, why doncha re-install the software you DID use before onto Precious?" and that point is quite logically valid. The problem is the "security" measures that Microsoft puts on their software to limit your right to profigate it among your hardware systems. Besides, I'm working with a new operating system anyway and the old software may not work.

The data files are not going anywhere, and I have them on backups, so this can wait till I acquire the new version, whenever that will be. In the meantime, I'm saving myself from entering in five or six pages of hard data. This is not procrastination--this is taking the time to do the job right.

FP

Good News: The damage to Precious was limited to the power supply, which was under warranty and has been replaced.

Bad News: Still have to pay for labor and didn't have enough moolah on hand, so I'll have to go to the bank first thing Monday and then pay the piper.

Well, at least I don't have to wait much longer than that one time we lost all our internet service.

I've signed up with the website for Dassault Systemes and will soon download what I can of the 3DVIA family of software--what's available FREE of course. Of course, I'm completely out of my depth...but what else is new?

So, one of the first things I learn about Win7 is that their version of Paint is quite different from the one in WinXP. So different that I don't so much like it yet. So I copied the XP version from King Kong's HD and installed it on Precious, as a sideman to the Win7 version, which I will learn to use little-by-little.

One thing I like to do is use IrfanView's capability to swap colors around on graphics. So I used Ctrl+Alt+PrtScrn to snatch the color pallets from both versions of Paint, stick them into a common file with a little clean up (using my favorite graphics program, LViewPro), and then subjected the Baseline pallets to the IrfanView color swap methods one by one (five in all). So that's what you see on yesterday's post.

I retrieved my license for the graphics program I use (LViewPro) and got it operational again. So now I can take photos, scan, and even create "2nd Player" versions of manga characters. Now I have to check to see whether I'll need new drivers for my scanner and camera...

It's been rare that both my mother's computer and my own run the same operating system. For a while we both had WinXP but then her hard drive crashed and got replaced with one with Win98 and it took till just recently to get beyond it.

When the Computer King boys tried to sell me on the idea of having Linux on Precious--when we had gone through so much trouble to get Mum's computer to have Windows 7, I was yea-close to going totally ballistic. So they put Win7 on mine...

And I check just a while ago. Mum has Win7 HOME on hers...I have Win7 PRO on mine! Just enough differences to make it an ordeal to work with.

I'm in for a long and tricky weekend.

"...they scrubbed that 'volunteer' mission you heard about."--punchline from one of Bob Stevens' There I Was comics.

We have about a quarter inch or so of icy slush on the pavement, so driving to Knoxville to exchange some computer components to get Precious running isn't going to happen today.

*Watches Moonshine rest under her cozy carport*

I'm sure we can all abide by that.