1 May 1998: Another Month, Another Hard Drive Rebuild

Friday, 1 May 1998:

Another Month, Another Hard Drive Rebuild

Yes, it happened again. I spent part of this evening rebuilding my hard drive again.

I'm still somewhat stumped by what's happening. This time, I did notice something similar to what happened last time: I ended up with a mysterious "Temporary Items" file in my trash a few days ago, and it would not let itself be deleted. I moved it onto my hard drive's main folder, and then a few days later my system would no longer boot, and Norton Utilities tells me that it can't repair damage to the file system's B-tree structure on the "Temporary Items" node. Weird.

I have a few more things left to try:

I still think the problem might be with Netscape, so I'm going to see about downloading the latest version, even if it's the same as what I've got. Maybe the copy I have got corrupted somehow.
I'm going to upgrade to MacOS 8.1 soon. Friends have been urging me to do this anyway. Right now I'm running 7.6.
As a last resort, I might actually start using Internet Explorer, although I've been so pleased with myself for getting my Mac Microsoft-free that I rebel against doing this. It's almost enough to make me buy a new machine instead.

My Mom says I should cut my losses and get a new machine anyway, which is a thought since I have this mystical feeling that the computer gods are punishing me for not buying genuine Apple hardware when I bought this machine (I have a Power Computing clone). But I'm reluctant to drop $3000.00 for a new machine when I'm sure that what I'm seeing is some sort of wacky software problem. After all, I had this machine for seven months without a problem.

Or, maybe I'm completely wrong and it is a hardware problem. At any rate, it's worth it to me to spend a little more time trying other things in the hopes it all works out, rather than spending all the money on new hardware. I could afford it if I need to - but I'd rather not need to. If I were actually replacing physical hard drives then I'd go for that in a minute, but I haven't even suffered any actual data loss, so...

Sigh.

Today: A good bike ride, a little farther than I've gone so far this year, and which has me nice and tired tonight. Then a little writing (I got halfway through what is probably the toughest scene in the story to write), and then some reading. Harlan Ellison has an absolutely scathing letter in the May 15 Comics Buyer's Guide directed at comics creator Erik Larsen.

There's also an article that the local comics shop that got closed down by the IRS a couple of months ago will have its assets auctioned off a week from Monday, and I'm wondering if it's worth it for me to go. I suspect that the lots will be pretty darned pricy, so perhaps not. I know zip about how the IRS conducts these sorts of auctions, and I must admit I would feel a little like a leech buying comics under those circumstances.

And then the latest Great Hard Drive Rebuild. Yeesh.

Michael Rawdon (Contact)