Categories
Hardware Life

NOOOOO!!!! What?!?!?!? NOOOOO!!!!!

Okay… what have I learned today?

cutting drive wires

  1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
  2. Ignoring rule number 1 should only be proceeded by backing up your crap.
  3. For those who are too lazy or too confident to pay attention to either of the first two rules, this advice: don’t dick around with it… dummy.
  4. Don’t be a cheap bastard and use RAID striping instead of buying a full sized disk (unless you’re dealing with data that is totally expendable).
  5. It takes a really long time to rip 870+ CDs… you don’t want to imagine having to do it twice. 
  6. The perceived time it takes for Windows to start up increases in  logarithmic proportion to the amount of data you think you have just lost.
  7. System restore can save your butt.
  8. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. (that deserves mentioning twice)

Okay, what ruined my day you ask?  This morning, before going into work, I did a quickie web search to see if there were Vista-compatible drivers for my RAID card.  This weekend I plan on installing Vista on my home machine and I realized I needed to lay some groundwork first… like making sure there were drivers for the various bits of hardware I have.  So, there are Vista drivers, Yay! 

So, genius boy here decides to download and install the new driver at 7:30 in the morning before going to work.  Heck, it’s for the card I have, no need to worry about something going wrong (sure, it seemed perfectly reasonable at the time).  A quick install and reboot later and my 500 gig music drive is suddenly two 250 gig, unreadable drives.  I almost cried.

Knowing I had to go to work and didn’t have time to futz with the damn thing I just shut down, kicked myself, packed up to go to work, then kicked myself again.

The worst part of it all was that as soon as I wasn’t focused on a task at work my mind would wander and …

“CRAP!!!! I SO SCREWED MYSELF!!!!”

If I had only bought two 500 gig drives instead four 250 gig drives the failure would have been no big deal… I’d have had two identical copies of my data (see rule number four above).  Given my RAID array wasn’t fully bullet-proof (and running just fine, thank you very much) I really shouldn’t have even played with it in the first place (see rule’s number one and three).  And so on…

All day I kept re-living my idiocy.  As soon as I could reasonably leave work I came straight home (panicking again every time my mind would wander at a stop light), dropped my coat just inside the front door and ran straight upstairs to sit down in front of my computer… the machine which I had so unceremoniously raped this morning.

I tried a couple of things, each requiring what seemed a stupendously long reboot time.  It’s amazing how painful it is to watch what usually seems a reasonably quick boot time when you’re imagining your entire CD collection going through a digital paper shredder.

In the end I did what I should have done first thing this morning, I used system restore to put my machine back in the state it was before I installed the drivers this morning.  Well, actually, what I should have done first thing this morning was poke myself in the eye with a pencil, and then kick myself for even considering updating the drivers for my RAID card when there was nothing wrong with it’s operation to begin with, followed by poking myself in the other eye to ensure I was unable to see well enough to screw myself. 

Honestly, sometimes I have the common sense of a small soap dish.

Categories
Life Music

The soundtrack for my life

Saw this on Christopher’s site (he saw it on Trina’s site (she got it from her brother-in-law (he saw it on CC Chapman’s site (he got it as a chain mail from his sister))))… have I mentioned I have trouble staying on track?  Where was I?  Oh yes… 

The general idea is this: put your entire music library on shuffle, write down the first 14 tracks and slot them in for these pre-set sections of your life movie (rules, my play list and movie scenes below).

So, here’s the thing, I wanted to link to clips of each of the tracks so people would be able to listen to them if curious, but Amazon doesn’t have samples of all these tracks… so I instead went waaaaayyyy off the reservation and and started pulling pictures in from my life, slapping them into Photo Story and adding the musical tracks.  The end result lands somewhere between nostalgia and narcissism.

Video: My Life


Steps/rules:

  1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
  2. Put it on shuffle
  3. Press play
  4. For every section below, type the song that’s playing
  5. When you go to a new section, press the next button
  6. Don’t lie and try to pretend you’re cool …
# Scene Track
1 Opening Credits Embrujo by Triumph
2 First Day At School Breaking the Silence by Queensryche
3 Falling in Love Boomerang by Kiss
4 Breaking Up Play Rough by Night Ranger
5 Prom In Search of a Rose by The Waterboys
6 Mental Breakdown Seeing Things by The Black Crowes
7 Flashbacks Knights of the Round Table by Monty Python
8 Getting Back Together Mr. Rainmaker by Warrant
9 Wedding Scene Apples and Pears by moO
10 Final Battle Homewrecker by Gretchen Wilson
11 Death Scene Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon by Neil Diamond
12 Funeral Song Full Sail by Rick Emmett
13 End Credits Two Guys a Girl and A Horn Section by Redwood School District
14 Anthem World Start Turning by Rick Springfield
Categories
Life

I’m a lucky bastard

Yep… I’m lucky.  Sure, you already know I have the smartest, most bee-you-ti-ful wife ever… but that’s not what I’m talking about in this instance.

Dublin is great… but there is some stuff you can’t buy in Ireland (a US power strip, for example).  As a result, when I come back to the states on business I always end up coming back with a shopping list.  This time I had some pretty random stuff on the list.  Being a guy (you know, never asks for directions) I just drove off into Redmond.

Randomly I turned right and hey!  A lighting store, perfect.  I needed 9″ harps to replace some which had been lost in the move.  Trying to drive out of the parking lot I was forced to turn right. A little down the street: hey!  Staples, I need 8.5″ by 11″ sheet protectors… and a power strip.

To make a short story long, by randomly driving around I never should have made it back to the hotel in under three hours with any of the things on my list. 

Swag, booty, haul

It took me 20 minutes and I got everything.  I’m a lucky bastard (did I mention I have a beautiful wife too?)

Categories
Life

Happy New Year!

It’s 2007, you know what that means?  My driver’s license expires this year.  I wonder of the California DMV will send me a new DL to my address in Ireland.

It is also that arbitrary time for a portion of the world to reset their calendars and reset their goals.  Yes, New Year’s resolution time.  Resolutions always feel artificial to me… and yet I cant resist the “clean slate” state they represent.  Here’s some stuff I’m going to do this year:

  • Join the gym (and use it at least twice a week)
  • Take more pictures (at least every other day)
  • Spend time reviewing my pictures (instead of just keeping 100% of them)
  • Get back on the Getting Things Done wagon

One of the things I rarely make the effort to do is to go through my pictures after taking them.  I should really get in the habit of tossing out the crap (I’m a horrible pack rat) and cleaning up the good pictures (below are two different compositions of the same shot, the second removes the distracting window from the bottom… though I’m still not sure which I like better 🙂 ).

Statue picture before editing

Roman statue

I hope everyone has a great 2007!

Categories
Life

Safe at home

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 


Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying “we have no new information on your bag”.  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we’d never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 


When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there… lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better… it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn’t leaked (which would have sucked big-time… Paula’s pillow was in the bag too).


Ahh… vacation is over, we can relax now. 😀

Categories
Life

Five things people don’t… er… didn’t know about me…

So, having tired of chain e-mail, the net has now switched to chain blog posts.


five


So, the game is apparently quite simple, give 5 things that few people know about you, then tag 5 friends to have them follow suit.  Omar has dragged me into this… So here goes:



  1. I wanted to be an actor, a stuntman, a race driver and/or design cars… and no, that wasn’t when I was in 6th grade, it was when I was in college.  I chose UCSD because it was close to Hollywood (well, closer than Toledo, Ohio was) and had a good engineering program (which I thought would be good for designing race cars).  Partway through school I decided I didn’t want to be an engineer, I wanted to be a Psychologist.  Suffice it to say, I didn’t do any of those things.  I do, however, still want to be Paul Newman.
  2. I’m related to Orson Welles, distantly. We have the same great-great-great grandfather… I’m not sure what that makes us.  Family lore also has it that James Hadfield is a distant relative, but that’s unsubstantiated (and probably nothing to brag about).
  3. My feet are a wonder of nature.  I’m 5’9″ and my feet are size 13.  They are also on upside-down: the bottom of them are baby-soft and the tops of my toes have calluses.  Between the size and the extra hair you’d think I was an over-grown Hobbit.
  4. I’m obsessed with solitaire on my cell phone.  It’s how I relax (and give myself carpal tunnel in my thumb).  The result is I’ve learned interesting things like:

    1. If you hold the joystick up it will automatically put cards up into the Ace piles.
    2. If you win a game and watch the cards bounce around, you’ll see there’s a bug, the cards count down from King down to Ace… then the King shows up again.
    3. While the end of game cards are bouncing around pressing “draw” will start stacking them back into the pile.

  5. I hate dry wood in my mouth.  Chopsticks, popsicle sticks, anything.  Gives me the willies big time.  If you’re ever at a Chinese (Japanese, Thai, etc.) restaurant with me you’ll see the first thing I do is dump my chopsticks into my water glass and leave them there until I’m satisfied they’re good an soaked.

There you go, 5 things.  I figure that at some point down the road someone will have to start up a game of “Five more things people don’t know about me”… but until then I’ll have to pass the baton.  



  • I started at ResNova to replace Rob (can you believe it’s been 12 years?), I’m sure he has a tale to tell. 
  • Jason has taken on the awesome responsibility of caring for our good friend Leslie.  There was no application process so I’d like to learn more.
  • For a long time Tami has been my blog “pen pal”.  Let’s hear five things from her (or her cat).
  • Not everyone on the net lives in America… so let’s hear from Casper, a fellow Dublin resident.
  • An last, but not least, to Steve Davis, because I’m sure he has something funny to say (or at least, frightening).

Technorati tags: 5 Things, Five Things

Categories
Life

Lazy Sunday

Last night was the Microsoft Christmas Party (less concern of being PC in a Catholic country) which kept us up a little later than usual.  After sleeping in we started the day feeling productive, having a light breakfast and making a list of things to do. 


The problem of the day, however, ended up being physics.  The pure mass of our couch proved to have entirely too much gravitational pull and we succumbed to the inevitable, curling up for a little TV and a light nap.


Comfy couch
hard to resist


The day wasn’t, however, a complete waste.  We did something we’ve always wanted to do… figure out what the heck this “cricket” thing is all about… roughly.  I’ve studied the basic laws of cricket from the BBC web site and now think I could watch a little bit of the sport and kind of understand what’s happening.  I’m still not sure, however, if I could sit still for the full six hours of a professional test.

Categories
Life

Economist: Ireland is the best place to live in the world

Lighthouse at Hoth

The Economist’s review of the world for 2005 has Ireland ranked as the best place to live in the world based on quality of life indicators.  The US failed to break the top ten but wasn’t far off at 13 in the survey of 111 countries.

You know the reason, right?

Guinness Brewery Entrance

Via BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4020523.stm (thanks for the pointer Laurence!)


Update: A link to the full report thanks to Casper: http://www.economist.com/media/pdf/QUALITY_OF_LIFE.pdf

Categories
Life News

Paula and I made the WSJ

PaulaAndReevesPseudoHedcut.jpg


The Wall Street Journal today had an article about US citizens moving to Ireland and it leads off talking a little about Paula and Me!  It’s really bizarre to see your name in print like that (and amazing to see how fast it gets forwarded around the office here in Dublin). 


If you receive the US edition you can find the article on page B4 of the October 31st issue.  In the European edition it takes up most of page 3.  I encourage you to cut it out, frame it and put it on your wall.


In other news my ego can now be seen from space.


satelliteego.jpg

Categories
Life

A neat bit of fun

DSC_4987.JPG 

Walking home from work on Wednesday (well… walking home from the train) I noticed a sign: “Dublin City Marathon Course Route, expect delays”.  Huh, what do you know?  The Marathon course runs right in front of our house.

Here we are, right between miles 18 and 19:

MarathonMap.jpg

It was very cool.  Lots of people lined the streets and cheered every runner as they went by.  Apparently people line the entire course (the Dublin Marathon is internationally known as “the friendly marathon” 🙂 ).