Sunday Snap: Lost in the Woods

You know how in those old Grimm's fairy tales, the kids that get lost in the woods leave a trail of small stones or crumbs to follow? It doesn't work that way for me. If I lost my son in the woods, forget about the pebbles or the breadcrumbs, I would follow a trail of computer parts and accessories to track him down.

The good news is that the boy is an absolute genius with computer hardware. The bad news is that our upstairs hallway looks like the Island of Misfit Hard Drives. He gets these old computers and scavenges them for any usable pieces, then creates a Frankenstein hybrid computer with bits and pieces from all of them. He just built a computer for his sister last week, which of course totally made her day. Now she's got one in her room that she can use for homework or watch movies on. He even made sure it had all the software she needed installed. Of course, for a day or two he would roll his eyes when she would call out "Product Support, oh Product Support, I need help!" from the top of the stairs. But he would trudge on up and help her troubleshoot. What a guy.

And the really really good news is that he's going to be building me a computer starting this week, something to replace the ancient limping-along-on-its-last-legs Dell I'm using right now. I'm probably the last person on earth using Windows XP. No wait, I know my mom still uses it, so that makes two of us. But I've had this thing for almost 7 years, so it's definitely time to upgrade. And at least I won't lose anymore blog posts to the Blue Screen of Death when he's done.

Of course, he wanted to put my computer in this crazy Gamer computer case. Okay, I admit that the red LED lights are cool, and the fact that it has several fans to keep everything cool is probably a good feature. But c'mon folks, gamers are just a little nutty about stuff like this. A computer case called the "Scout" or the "Sniper"?? Get real! I mean, I don't even name my bikes silly stuff like that (okay, I did have one named "Hi Ho Silver", but my kids named that one when they were small). We settled on a less ostentatious case that still had the cooling fans, you'll be happy to know.

So now I have to get some sleep so I can get us all to karate in the morning, and I have to go peel my teenager away from his beloved hardware treasure trove. Happy weekend to all.

If You Could Only Talk to Product Support While Cycling

So I'm still slaving away over the #@! hard drive on my main computer, trying to get it reformatted. And it always galls me when I have to get to the point of calling product support because you know, I actually used to work in the computer industry and fancy myself not a complete novice on these devices (my first day of work at Microsoft in 1988, I arrived at my desk to find a PC in pieces with cards I needed to install, and mind you I had only worked on Macintoshes and mainframes before that!).

So here I am, an hour into a chat session with a product support specialist from heaven knows where on earth, and after succinctly stating my problem:

I quote directly from the chat session: "I have already tried to install Windows from the reinstallation disk, and it doesn't even let me get to the page with the partitions before I get the blue screen of death and the following error:

REGISTRY_ERROR STOP: 0X00000051"

so then an HOUR into the session after various dorking around, the support person tries to get me to run install from the reinstallation disk, and after my protestations that I already did, they make me do it again and then ask me what error message I get. I type in the above error code, AGAIN, and finally we can proceed. However, that was half an hour ago, and now I've been bumped up to a supervisor who maybe knows something about something.

If I could only do all of this while on my bike trainer, it wouldn't feel like such a monumental waste of time but I'm stuck sitting here for the duration - 1:30 and counting.

The good news is that I always buy my computers from Dell, and Dell product support has not once failed me, and I'm probably the pickiest support customer on earth. So I have faith that all of these efforts will not be in vain and I will indeed get my hard drive back and operational, eventually...

Requiem For A Hard Drive

Alas poor hard drive, I knew him well. But he's dead and gone and a new one has (thankfully) taken his place. It'll be awhile before I have even half of the stuff uploaded that I need to, but at least I am up and running and it's a start.

Last weekend was crazy-busy with all of the end-of-term recitals and programs (though we are homeschoolers, everything seems to go with the school calendar for some reason). So I missed the first group open-water swim at the lake last Saturday (funny thing, I couldn't squeeze it in between our karate belt tests, a birthday party, and a my daughter's huge dance performance), but I did manage to make it to my Master's swim group this morning. That ended up being a good thing as I have been in the workout doldrums for more than a week. Everything feels wrong, everything's sore, I'm not working out with enough volume or intensity for it to be overtraining, but it's probably related to overall life intensity and not getting enough sleep to really recuperate. So today's swim was a breath of fresh air. Finally it felt like my body was working right again. All last week it felt like I'd been taken apart by some crazed factory worker and put back together all wrong. Now at least my arms and legs are working in the right directions.

I also took the liberty of ordering myself some new running shoes this week after realizing that the last time I ordered them was early last fall! I usually don't let my shoes get this bad, and I think that's been responsible for much of my leg, hip, knee, and back pains this week. A new swimming suit was also in order as all of the elasticity suddenly failed in my old one, resulting in the straps rubbing my neck raw while the other end of the suit continually trying to crawl upwards in a most uncomfortable manner. And goggles as well, so maybe next week I can actually see something. So hopefully next week, having outfitted myself appropriately and maybe even gotten some rest, I can feel like the athlete I used to be (at least a week or so ago).