"Murphy was an optimist!"
And I can feel the changes coming on… August 31, 2009 6:13 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Philosophy, PoetryWalking through Butler & Bailey, I feel a swell of joy
I sense positive change in my life
As if I am in the process of emerging from a cocoon.
I am calm
I can handle the next part of this journey with ease
I am happy!
I exit the store
To see a dragonfly dying on the sidewalk
Slowly moving its wings for the final time.
I have but one goal today August 31, 2009 7:50 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeI have a small project to complete. Today is all about that project.
add a commentWindows won’t boot past the logo August 30, 2009 11:20 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, Software, TechnologyIn trying to clone my 60 gb hard drive to a 500 gb hard drive, I ran some utilities on the 60 gb hard drive to fix bad sectors and find missing data. Apparently in the process, I damaged something in Windows. Right now the drive will not boot beyond the blue screen with the Windows XP logo in regular mode nor in safe mode. I’m documenting my steps here because the usual troubleshooting steps have failed and I need to make sure I’m not repeating the same steps twice. (more…)
add a commentOn the square August 29, 2009 8:29 pm
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
Mobile post sent by djuggler using Utterli. Replies.
Evening adventure August 29, 2009 6:49 pm
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
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Caution! August 28, 2009 8:21 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeBusy day ahead!
add a commentOf Grasshoppers August 27, 2009 3:34 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Of Grasshoppers, PhilosophyStudent: One more fight.
Master: Is there a purpose?
Today’s Technical Feat August 27, 2009 1:16 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Gadgets, Hardware, TechnologyToday I am installing openssh server on Ubuntu’s Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS which is remarkably easy so that I can use Clonezilla to make an image of a hard drive from one machine, across the network, to Seagate FreeAgent Go 500 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive
My new hard drive arrived! August 27, 2009 10:49 am
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
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Deep Thoughts August 27, 2009 7:57 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Deep Thoughts, PhilosophyHowever I came to be here is irrelevant; I am here now.
add a commentOdd Stats August 27, 2009 6:35 am
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily LifeDo you ever look at your blog’s statistics and wonder if you accidentally offended people? I do.
2commentsDeep Thoughts August 26, 2009 8:39 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Deep Thoughts, PhilosophyThe demons we chose to ignore cause the greatest grief.
add a commentAren’t older sisters great! August 26, 2009 6:29 pm
Posted by utterz in : Daily Life, Podcasting
My husband sense is tingling August 26, 2009 1:41 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Cathy, Daily Life, Family, Of Being Dad
I know..it could be that Cathy is bitter over yesterday’s overwhelming lack of specialness. But that’s not it. Something is amiss. Usually this means I am forgetting a commitment. Or there is something important to the Venusian
The Hard Drive Chronicles August 25, 2009 8:53 pm
Posted by Doug McCaughan in : Daily Life, Hardware, TechnologyI work on a Frankenstein computer. No, that’s not some geeky brand of elite super computer. It is spare parts held together with bailing wire and dust. It is an new piece of hardware fit into an old case with the help of a Dremel and a cutting blade. It is just enough memory to do what I need but not quite enough to do what I want. And it is a 60 gb hard drive that floats between 500 mb and 2 gb of free space.
I finally squirreled away enough from my budget to purchase a new 500 gb (p)ATA hard drive. (Being honest with myself this was less about budget and more about martyrdom. I buy things for the kids before myself.) Additionally, Newegg had a great special on a USB external drive. Since I vowed to free myself from being bound to a single computer, I jumped on the special with plans to install a bootable OS such as Ubuntu and keep my entire development environment on the USB drive. As such, I should be able to work anywhere on just about any machine with enough memory.
The upgrade plan was simple. Make a backup of my workstation to the usb drive, then clone the 60 gb drive to the 500 gb drive and I’d be done. Unfortunately, the 60 gb drive came dead on arrival and had to be RMA’d. I couldn’t wait so I started the cloning process but ran into read errors. So 2 days of drive testing and using different bootable CDs with a variety of partitioning and cloning software turned into 3 days and then it happened. Everything quit working! I powered down and haven’t had the guts to return since. I could have just potentially lost a significant amount of data related to the success (if you want to call it that) of my freelancing career and the support and operation of my family. No, despite my rhetoric about the importance of backups, particularly offsite backups, I do not practice what I preach. The quantity of data I manage long outgrew my ability to create meaningful backups of every bit and byte. Instead I grab what is viewed as essential and make sure it is in a few places. For instance, I drop a couple of dollars each month to make sure Amazon has a copy of all our family photos in addition to the subset of photos that make it up to Flickr. I am not prepared to lose entire hard drives.
Next immediate plan of action: Determine damage-Test components individually. If neither drive works by itself, assume the IDE controller fried and test in another machine. If I can show the drives are both good and pass a chkdsk, then I have one more big gun of a partitioning program and an equally big gun of a cloning program that I have not tried. I expect them to be successful and this debacle to be over. Oh..but I have to watch Warehouse 13 first!
Update: My 60 gb drive has been confirmed functional with data. My current suspicion is that the primary ide controller has failed. This could be a good excuse to buy a new computer 
Update: 60 gb drive okay but no longer boots. IDE controller is fine. 500 gb drive approved for RMA. Next step, clone the 60 gb drive to some backup space then tinker with the master boot record to see if I can get the drive booting again.
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