Tag Archive for technology bites

More Computer problems

February 1, 2005 planet3rry No comments

So let me tell you what my problems are now… I had my computer crash last thursday or Friday. With some luck I was able to at least get it to run scandisk, something that I started Friday morning. Well, it is STILL scanning. The reason is that the program is looking for (and finding) spots on the hard drive that are 'bad clusters' or damaged somehow. As a result, Scandisk must process the information and ask you if you want it to fix the problem or let it be. I, of course, would like the stuff fixed, so I when the pop-up screen asks me what to do I want to fix it. well, it took about 2 hours for it to get to 79% at which it has found a couple hundred clusters (out of 1.2 million) that are damaged. For it to fix the cluster, it takes about 5-7 minutes for it to think about what it wants to do and then another 4-6 minutes to process and fix it. My most recent cluster was 975,375, I just hope it does not do this for the 0.3 million. I can abandon the disk and reformat it because this disk has all of our information on it, so I would have to copy it first. I have thought about purchasing a new hard drive, I found one at CompUSA for about $60, but don't have the liquid capital to make that kind of purchase at this time, so I am stuck with staring at the computer hitting 'F' a bunch of times.

The crazy thing is that I have had some time at home the past few days and I could have been updating Eric's pictures… as well as putting our new Baby Incognito pictures that we got yesterday… more on that later.


Life In General

HAL: I'm sorry [Terry], I'm afraid I can't do that.

January 28, 2005 planet3rry No comments

Throw me back into the computer woes category. After about 3 weeks of computer success, I am back at square 1. It seems that sometime yesterday, my computer was in the hibernation/powerdown mode. When I tried to bring it back to life, It seemed to hang. So I did a warm reboot and when it went through the load up, it started a perpetual reboot. It would get past the Windows logo screen but then a blue screen would flash for a split second and the computer would reboot. I managed to get the computer to stop at the prompt where I can load windows via Safe Mode or some other choices. Well, it got hung on loading one of the drivers. My suspicion is that the video driver has become corrupt and is stopping Windows from loading properly. After a couple of troubleshooting maneuvers, I managed scandisk to run, which it found some errors. I left the computer going through a physical scan of the harddrive and I could see that there were a few bad clusters on the the drive. Hopefully when I get home it will have made any correction and I can get my computer back.

I ran 2.6 miles at a new greenway (to me) in Knoxville. It is really close to my house and is an asphalt greenway around two soccer fields and next to the lake. It was very cold and particularlywindy on one leg of the greenway. I was trying to squeeze some running in between watching Eric and going back to UT for my Physics tutoree.

I have a Physics tutor for this semester on Thursdays. I think that I might pick up a Calculus person here next week. So far I have had no Statistics students… what is up with that.

We go in for our 20 wk Ultrasound. SO, if my computer is fixed by them, maybe I will have some pictures to post. I had been working on photo albums of Eric to update the ancient albums and they are on my dead computer. Woe is Me!


Life In General, running , ,

Almost back online

January 3, 2005 planet3rry No comments

After almost two weeks of not having internet or computers, for that matter, I am almost online again. I solved my windows problems, who knew that a 3 and S are TOTALLY different. Well, I DO, now… heehee. However, my next obstacle is that my Linksys Wireless Card can SEE the router but cannot connect to it. I have tried a bunch of different attempts to get the card to recognize the router, but it WILL not connect. Had it worked earlier this week, I would have been happier since I have been battling the card for, oh 4 days now. Today we bought a Netgear USB wireless adapter and that is dead in the water, it will not even turn on, no flashing lights, so I have to return that tomorrow. Ugh. I did hear back from PCCHIPS and hope that they give me a RMA number for the Kaput motherboard, then I could have two machines running. I was supposed to get a Linux CD from David (my Brother-In-Law) but I slept through most of Christmas, more on that later…


Life In General

Jack Frost

December 13, 2004 planet3rry No comments

12.13.04 Jack Frost
He is abusing us right now. It is cold outside and it is just frightful, he is eating our noses. Regardless, it is nice to not have any rain and none in the forecast. Woo-Hoo.

Yesterday we put up our outside lights up. Which included icecicles on our driveway barrier wall. Colored lights in some of our bushes and then some white lights, on the ground, bordering the landscaping garden. I will have to try to get a picture at twilight to show the great work we did.

Also yesterday, I started to build a little compost with the intention of creating a garden in the spring. Unfortunately I have little real estate to build a garden. I have the space, it’s just that my backyard is protected by trees and so lighting is a problem. There is one patch that is relatively flat and that will get a couple of hours of mid day sun. That should provided enough for a small garden. I figured that I would start off small and see how it goes. I am starting with a 2×2 plot of compost. I figure for my garden will extend that out some what to accommodate what I want to grow.

My computer is still dead. I need to write to the company to see if I can get a replacement. I found one online that is about $50. In the mean time, I am going to take Jen’s old computer now that she has the laptop and convert it to win XP, then slave the hard drive so that I have access to the files on the computer. I really need to get the pictures of American Samoa and Eric’s pictures. I have a bunch to put up, but they are stranded right now.

My quads are aching right now. I will have to try to run on the treadmill tonight to work the pain out. I am pondering if I am going to break 500 miles for the year. I definitely can if I put my mind to it. My Next official race will be the Calhoun’s 10 miler which my PR for the race is 1:34:40 which works out to be a 9:28 pace.


Life In General, running , ,

Drought

December 9, 2004 planet3rry No comments

12.09.04 Drought
It has now been 2 weeks since I have ran, any distance. How much does that stink? Not as much as my natural butt odor (haha). Anyway, all lingering signs of HFM disease are over for me. I think that I have beaten the stomach bug that seems to be bother the rest of the family. Could be from the large quantities of hot sauce that I have consumed that has made my stomach resistant to these viruses. mmmm hot saucilious.

Eric seems to have a running nose now. Not exactly sure the cause for the drainage whether it is the bring weather changes we have been having, and allergy or sorts or perhaps on coming cold. Today is the last day that he is in preschool for the rest of the year. They are closed for the rest of the year, so that will limit his expose to germs. He played in a bunch of leaves yesterday and enjoyed it immensely, I do not have pictures though.

Tragedy struck yesterday morning. My computer would not wake up from hibernation. I am not sure what is going on, but I think that the motherboard is down and out. I checked my receipts and it is not covered anymore for an exchange. I could have bought the 1year technical warranty, but I seem that was a little foolish when I was buying parts. I can see getting it for a brand new system, but not for parts. Anyway, if the motherboard is the culprit, that will be another $50 or so… and time. Unfortunately, all my pictures of Eric are on that hard drive (please, hard drive be okay!) and so I can’t update that until I can extract or revive the computer. Luckily I made an archive backup of all the pictures up to date.

I have not decided about livejournal or not. I think I may play with it a little bit and see if I want to make a change. I’d sure love to have people be able to make comments to specific posts and then use The Scribblin’ Monkey as a guestbook.

Jen has a skin care class today and so I am not sure that I will run. I would consider running out side after Eric is in bed, but given the state of the weather, I do not own water skis.


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Cut the CLUTTER!

October 15, 2004 planet3rry No comments

This is exactly what I am trying to do with our website. We have a bunch of old files that are just taking up space. So, I have been in the process of seeing which files are extraneous and getting rid of them. By the way, I have updated our Pager Page, which is now a text messaging page that will send a message straight to our cell phone. The pages that we have for our friend’s kids is lacking about a year worth of births! Also there are a number of pages that are not of the same format, in terms of color and style. hose pages will need to be corrected in the future. Why have I been doing this you ask? Well, the other day, I got a new toy. Meet ‘Da Kruza’

Da Kruza

I got this new baby off eBay this week. Unfortunately after I had already bought it, I found it for about $10 cheaper on a different website. I am not too mad, because where I found it was not a place I would have ever thought to look. So, I made the decision with what information I had… sound familiar? Da Kruza weights in at a 1.0GB storage size, which replaces my trusty rusty 256MB Lexar JumpDrive that I have had for a year. There was no way that I could fit our website onto something that small. So now that I have it on a “Giger”, our website is now portable, which means that I can work on it at home or at work.

Eric has been sick. He broke out into a rash very suddenly on wednesday. Jen called the nurse and she had him come in that afternoon, thanks to a cancellation. The diagnosis was that he had a virus, or rather, he was in the last stages of the virus. he was no longer contagious, but as a common reaction children often break out into a hives type rash. He might still have something though because he is not quite well. He’ll be in a great mood and then in a bad mood, almost faster than me!

Firefox

I love Firefox! I have having so much more fun with this browser. The two things that I like about the most are 1)The Mouse Gestures and 2)Sage

Firefox has many extensions that are small programs that run for Firefox. one of the programs is a Mouse Gestures Extension that allows you do perform commands with only using the mouse. For Example, when I want to go Back on a website, I do not have to Click ‘BACK’ or hit the ‘backspace’ key. I just have to Right Click and move the mouse to the left! “Beautiful!” as Tony Bruno would say. The only thing that I would like to see is the ability to convert Firefox bookmarks into IE bookmarks (i.e. shortcuts). The reason is that I carry my Favorites on Da Kruza and so not everyone has (but should get) Firefox. So it’s a matter on convenience for me.


Life In General

What’s the Word? Thunderbird! What’s the Price?

September 30, 2004 planet3rry No comments

09.30.04 – What’s the Word? Thunderbird! What’s the Price?
“Happy Birt” to Jen since yesterday was her half-birthday. My birthday was just peachy the other day. The custom here at the CIRPC is to bring in your own birthday cake and ice cream and then everyone signs happy birthday and eat cake. I brought in a texas chocolate cake that I made with cream cheese icing. Usually, this cake has some yummy rich chocolate icing on top, but I found that cream cheese icing provides a nice complement to the cake. Everyone seemed to like it which made me happy. After work, I had two tutoring appointments at the Thornton Center, one at 5pm and the other at 7pm. At 8, I went and played handyman to change some locks and move some furniture, so I didn’t home until 10:30pm. I didn’t mind one bit because when I got home Jen was waiting for me with an extra birthday gift, so that made me happy.

I have made a switch to Mozilla’s FirefoxFirefox internet browser and ThunderbirdThunderbird email client. Both have been getting great reviews on their ease and security. So, I thought I would try them out and so far I am pleased. Firefox looks more like IE than netscape and Thunderbird has some differences than OE but it reminds me something closer to Eudora. So far the only problem hat I have had is my Yahoo LauchCAST radio station (talan71) will not play in Firefox. The station thinks that I am Netscape and it says it will only play the stream in IE, hmmm…. monopoly?

I have not ran since Saturday, and now it is Thursday, sheesh. Most of it has been due my schedule this week. Yesterday night when I got home, I started with finishing the laundry and then working on the computer. Although, it is not up yet, I do have the “Best of Boppy” in the works, honestly. I also created back CD of all the Eric pictures that I have downloaded to date. I just checked and I have 3,089 files (that includes movies and picture files) totaling 1.3 Gigabytes of data. Wow! I knew it was allot but I did not think it was that much. I finally got my CD burner to work, so I am busy archiving older files that are no longer needed.

Speaking of Eric, This morning, before I left, he walked a good 10 feet to me. He even caught himself from falling over a few times while standing. He is really making some big transitions right now. we packed up his high chair and got him a booster seat for the table. Now he can participate in daily dinners with us. He is also just about outgrowing his 12 month clothes. The 12-18 month size still fits since they are cut a little wider, but the sizes just for the 12 month old are getting too tight.

Tomorrow, I will be archiving these blogs as it is a new month. I have not decided if I will archive the whole month or just through the 15th. I am leaning toward the latter, as people check this rarely, except for Pete, I think. Now that I am able to update it more often, I am thinking about redoing my “news” pages a bit. Currently, they are set up by Year, but I may break them down a little further but increase the font size, to make reading easier.


Life In General, running , ,

At the speed of slow

September 22, 2004 planet3rry No comments

I realized last night that because I tutor on Tuesday Nights, I don’t see Eric from Monday night bed time until wednesday night when I get home. Almost a 48 hour span of time of not seeing the little monster. Allot can happen in 48 hours, so I run the risk of missing some great happening. Of course, being gone all day at work does not increase my odds. Well, someone was a early riser today (6:45am) and I got to see him! YAY! Didn’t get to spend anytime with him, but did get to hold him.

Yesterday, Eric walked in between Jen and Diane, who were about 4 feet apart, about 4 times without falling and apparently screaming with delight. Jen also commented that walking is becoming his preferred mode of transportation, although not extremely proficient at it yet.

I ran 5.75 miles yesterday before my tutor session. Since I was on campus, I decided to go to the Ag campus and follow the Neyland Greenway until a great place to eat called Riverside Tavern. Once I was there, I thought it would be cool to run back through downtown and onto to campus. And yes, it was cool, when I was able to run while in the shadow of a building. Running west in the sunset was killer, I really couldn’t see much because of the sun’s location. I did not have any incidents, so that was fine. When I got back to the car, I realized that I had cruised through the run in 49:04. Today, when I mapped out the mileage, it put me at a 8:32 minutes per mile. That is FAST for me on a training run. I should have ran at a 10:00 minute pace or something around there. If I run too fast, too often then I will cause more damage and ultimately, slow my times down. Thursdays are suppose to be my speed days on the treadmill, where I can regulate my pace.

I did some work on my website today. I finally uploaded a few pages that I had been working on for a long time now. Thanks to Mom and a scanner, I was able to put up some pictures of my aunts and uncles. Also, I was able to move some pictures from our Iowa trip in 2001, to put up family members living there. I did not put up a picture of Chris, just out respect since all I had available at the time was The Cove pictures and I know how much he loves them. You’ll also see that Pete’s side is pretty barren. Well, I do have a few pictures of Uncle Ray, but that is about it. They are also on a different computer, so they are not ready. Hopefully, when Pete reads this, he’ll fill in some of the blanks for me. I also included some of the books that I have recently finished and some that I would like to read. You can find all of this new stuff by clicking the ‘about me’ link in the black header bar at the top of this page.

My home computer is almost ready. I have fixed the sound and have all of my old files off of the other hard drives. So, I should be ready for some Eric Updates by weekend! I know that you can’t wait! I’ll be doing finances and speedwork tonight, so I doubt that I will get to them tonight, but then again you never know.

We are having beautiful weather here in Knoxville. It in the upper 50′s this morning and is in the low-mid 80′s in the afternoon. Cool and just absolutely beautiful. Of course, it won’t last too long, but I am going to enjoy it while I can.


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Computer’s on the way…

September 9, 2004 planet3rry No comments

I had a great run in my subdivision last night which pushed me over the 300 mile marker for the year. The run was also significant because I was able to maintain really close to my easy training pace without having to stop to walk on my course. The course that I have is full of hills, two very long hills, one at mile 2 and the other at mile 4. I wish I could track the altitude change for each of the hills, I am sure that they would be doosies.

Eric is now up to 3 consecutive steps now. He took them last night before his bath. Plus we also washed his hair. I will have to capture video if at all possible. More details in the days to come.

Our computer parts are on the way. Which means that I will be putting computers together this weekend. Hopefully everything will work out and the computers will be up and running without any problems. I am thinking that I may keep Jen’s computer on Windows 98, although XP does have some nice features with it. I guess I will wait to see. I expect that I will eat up most of my saturday archiving and installing the computers.


Life In General, running ,

Computers are not your friends

September 1, 2004 planet3rry No comments

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO PAUL & ZOE VELAS. Believe it or not, they are 4 years old today! WOW!

First and foremost, Eric took about 5 steps on his own last Friday night. In addition he also went from a sitting to a standing position. Since then, he has done nothing! He stands some and can cruise around the furniture and other inanimate objects. He will also walk if you let him hold onto your fingers, but the bottom line is that he can still travel faster crawling. So, he’ll get stronger and more dexterity on his feet and then start running, maybe at a 5k pace.

As for my running, I had a running packed Saturday. First of all, I volunteered at the Sept 11th Memorial 5k race in Knoxville. I was out on the course calling out split times at the mile 1 and 2 markers. After that, I went to lakeshore greenway and ran 4 loops which is 8.8 miles. It was pretty darn hot and for the 4th loop, I took some predetermined walk breaks. There was no other way that I would have made it for that last loop. Right when I was getting back to the Xterra, Solange called me and asked if I wanted to go running in the afternoon. “Sounds good to me!”. So I went and picked up Eric, went home, Eric and I napped and then made it out to Solange’s where she and I ran 5 miles. I have taken Sunday and Monday off, but I plan on running today.

I had fun with computers this weekend. The parts that I ordered came in and I started moving programs and files on Friday night, so that the parts would be ready for some construction. I found out that night that the old AGP cards (video) did not fit into the new motherboard, so that meant that Saturday I would have to go out and get a new video card. When I went out on Saturday, before I ran with Solange, I picked up a video card and a new hard drive. when I got home that night, the video card was the wrong type, UGH! Also, I ended up giving up that night at trying to format the new hard drive. No matter what I did, the software would not initialize. After a couple of hours on Sunday, the hard drive FINALLY formatted and was ready to load the OS. I went back to CompUSA to exchange the video card which worked when I got it home. SO I was able to put together Jen’s computer up and running and is now a lot faster with more memory. My computer is still in pieces right now. I am wrestling with the motherboard not booting up when I attach the old DVD and CDRW drive to the motherboard! Computers make our life easier… yeah right!


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