Hanging On

This new year has not started out well.

First, there's the computer crash thing. Monday night I had a friend come over with Norton Utilities to help me poke at the hard drive. It simply could not be repaired. However, we were able to salvage a few files I wanted to save (and didn't have backed up). Most everything else was already backed up - by being on my ISP server, if nothing else. So it wasn't a big loss. I only lost one file I'd wanted to save, and it had only been written two days before the crash. It was a somewhat timely piece of work, so there's not a lot of point in recreating it now.

So eventually I had to do a low-level reformat of my hard drive. This actually seemed to work; I re-installed the system software, and the machine rebooted from the hard drive successfully. I was rather pleased, although wary that there was a deeper problem that just hadn't revealed itself yet.

Tuesday I spent most of the evening restoring all my files to the disk, and downloading my Web pages over the modem. I also downloaded some freeware and shareware that I use regularly and didn't have backed up. Once I had it all downloaded, I backed it up on Zip disks; once bitten, twice shy, right?

So, finally, I was all ready to go. I started up Netscape, and...

Sorry, your computer won't boot up any more.

And whereas before the disk seemed to be spinning, but just not reading, now it sounds like it isn't even spinning.

AAAARRRRGGGGHHHH!!!

So I think the disk is definitely toast. This weekend I will try the reformat one more time, and then I'm not sure what to do. I have heard some unflattering things about the company currently handling Power Computing's warranties, and given a choice between having to ship my computer off somewhere and getting a new drive at the cost of being computerless for a few weeks, and buying a new drive myself and getting it installed quickly, I'm inclined to do the latter.

I might also investigate getting a high-powered laptop as a backup for these things. Among other reasons, but that's the main one.

It has been interesting to see my reaction to being computerless. I am clearly a low-level addict when it comes to the Internet, but that's hardly surprising, as it's been a significant component of my life for over eight years. My social life in general is pretty lame by most standards, but a significant piece of that social life is through the net (which I guess makes it even lamer).

I also have a personality which tends to "freeze up" when confronted with major problems like this, so I've been dragging my feet on trying to solve it, and generally just staying at home by myself. It hasn't helped that the holidays have substantially screwed up my routine, with my coffee shop hangout being closed much of the time, and people being busy during the actual holidays. (Yes, I'm very much a creature of habit. And changes to my life tend to be made only slowly, and after great consideration. I rarely jump right into things. I always, always want to largely understand what I'm getting into before I get into it.)

Yep, the heat wasn't on. Or, more specifically, it was on, it just wasn't working; it was pumping out cold air. I quickly decided I wasn't up to the baking; this was one blow too many, and I just wanted to sit and read and watch TV and take the night offs, especially after the previous night's waste of time in front of the computer. (I may yet bake baklava this weekend, however.)

Fortunately, I have a very good landlord company, and they responded to my phone call promptly. They weren't able to get someone out to fix the heating unit, but they did bring me some portable heaters, and a promise of the heat being fixed today. Also fortunately, we're having an incredibly mild winter, so it was not nearly as cold as it could have been.

On the other hand, the forecast today is for 3-to-8 inches of snow by tomorrow morning. That would be nice!

I'm always a little surprised at how different the original pilot, "The Gathering", is, especially the very different make-up. Although there were a few good scenes added back into the TNT edit, overall I think the original version of the pilot was better. First of all, Stewart Copeland's music was much better than Chris Franke's rather languid stuff. And some of the added scenes were superfluous (such as Delenn rescuing Sinclair and Garibaldi from the alien sector), plus the incredibly annoying and pointless comment that Kosh made to the man he thought was Sinclair, which is a major spoiler for later in the series.

Still, I like the pilot more than many people. It certainly had many flaws, but it was basically fairly entertaining.

I am going to try to update this journal more often, even with my computer down; I can try to work on it after work. We'll see.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)