See also
Blog
-
Down the ‘recover dead hard drive’ rabbit hole
So I’ve had a friend’s computer for what must be 4 weeks now. Fortunately, he has other computers on which he can do his work. His hard drive failed badly. I said I could work on it in the evenings and weekends. We bought a 1.5TB hard drive and I proceeded to fight to get the data from the old drive to the new. I succeed in recovering most if not all the data by installing Ubuntu 11.04 on the new drive, installing Gnu’s ddrescue, using GParted to resize Ubuntu and create a partition to hold Windows Vista, the used ddrescue to recover the dying drive to the new partition. Data saved!
Unfortunately, GRUB2 detects both operating systems but fails to boot to Vista, ergo, a crazy path of chkdsk and recovery console nonsense that eventually led to GRUB2 not even coming up. So, after 4 weeks or so, I decided this post will chronicle the recovery moving forward.
Sunday, 1:10pm: Grub fails to load. The last repair of Ubuntu says it couldn’t load a boot manager and one will have to be installed manually. fdisk claims "partition[s] do not end on cylinder boundary” but supposedly this doesn’t matter. GParted has been used to resize Ubuntu partition to end on cylinder boundary but Vista partition could not be resized at this time. GParted reports 3 bad sectors on the Vista partition. Running chkdsk again but it looks like I may have to blow away the partition and start again. Fortunately I have a backup on a good drive.
Update Saturday, August 27: My friend has grown irritated at the length of time this has taken. I have grown frustrated at the near pointless hours upon hours put into this machine. However, I have had several near successes. I feel like we are right at the finish line and giving up. I have reformatted the 1500GB hard drive and reinstalled Ubuntu 11.04. I’ve checked the firmware on the hard drive to confirm it is the latest. I’ve checked the motherboard bios to confirm it is the latest. I’m now using GParted to resize Ubuntu so that I can do the final copy of the Windows data so that even if I cannot get the machine to boot to windows, my friend will be able to read his data.
-
Bacon just isn’t enough – This will be my Thanksgiving meal!
Vegans, avert your eyes! Everyone else, get your AEDs out because you might need them.
-
Please allow your APIs to bypass 2 factor authentication – Mint and Paypal, I’m talking to you!
I use and love Mint.com. I use and love my Paypal security key. However, I cannot use the two together. Either I use mint.com without my paypal details (undesirable) or I lower the security on my Paypal account by deactivating my security key (undesirable).Two-factor authentication (TFA, T-FA or 2FA) is an approach to authentication which requires the presentation of two different kinds of evidence that someone is who they say they are.
What is desirable is the ability for to authorize certain applications to bypass 2 factor authentication in the same way that Google Accounts allows me to bypass their 2 factor authentication for applications that I trust. So, I should be able to go into my Paypal settings and say “trust mint.com without 2 factor authentication” and it would assign a key (guid, long string of characters, whatever) specifically for mint.com that effectively would be mint’s password into my Paypal account.
To make this work, would require cooperation between Mint and Paypal of course. To see this in practice, go to Google Accounts, turn on 2 factor authentication, then set up Gmail on an iPhone, Blackberry or Android. There’s the model.
See also: Google’s Getting started with 2-step verification for a demonstration of application specific passwords.
-
Saturday Building Projects for Children
We participate in Home Depot’s Kid’s Workshops on the first Saturday of each month.
Kids Workshop is an award-winning program that has been offered at The Home Depot stores since 1997. The workshops are free, how-to clinics designed for children ages 5-12, available on the first Saturday of each month between 9 a.m. and noon at all The Home Depot stores. Children, accompanied by an adult, use their skills to create objects that can be used in and around their homes or communities. …
- Since 1997, 17.5 million projects have been built at Kids Workshops
- More than 1 million children built their first toolbox at The Home Depot.
- More than 845,000 birdhouses have been constructed at Kids Workshops.
- 75 children per store attend a Kids Workshop on average while many stores have 200 kids attend regularly.
See also: Home Improver Club, Home Depot Blog, and Corporate Statement.
-
2010 Taxes Filed!
August 15th is Monday and the IRS has already accepted my 2010 tax return! Wait, what do you mean "the other month that starts with A"?
-
Worth 1000 Words
I keep trying to diverge from politics then people/magazines/newspapers/etc keep producing gems like this:
-
What is the Midwest?
Like the fuzzy definition of "West Knoxville," nobody really seems to know what makes up the Midwest. The site MidwestSportsFans.com explains. Due to Josh Tinley‘s rant on intellectual property rights, I’m hesitant to quote anything from his article other thing suggesting you read it on MidwestSportsFans.com; however, I believe this sentence is highly notable and relates to Knoxville’s bizarre definition of "West Knoxville":
The term "Midwest" comes from a bygone era when the population of the United States was so concentrated on the eastern seaboard that anything on the far side of the Alleghenies was considered western.
Go to MidwestSportsFans.com to see some maps helping to explain "Midwest."
