Good-Bye Microwave

This morning I bid a tearful farewell to my microwave.

A large, slightly-overpowered Panasonic that was almost-certainly not suited for my apartment's aged wiring, it served me well for several years as I prepared my breakfast, heated water or leftovers, and similar tasks. It was a beast that took up far too much counter space and the plug was hot to the touch if it ran for more than a couple of minutes. Some of the insulation melted at one point.

I'm quite surprised it didn't explode or cause a fire.

It was a behemoth, but it was a reliable thing. The recent flickering and hiccups were certain an indicator that something was wrong.

And now my microwave is dead.

Good-bye, Panasonic microwave. You will be missed.

Now to see if this smaller Black and Decker will do as well.

Thanks Amazon!

So Amazon S3 crapped out earlier today. Hosed all sorts of things. Looks like the issues are persisting.

I can't help but laugh a little. So many people talk up the benefits of "the cloud". Oh sure, there are many benefits, but as the Amazon outage shows, it's kind of a house of cards as well...

I'll have a cuppa...

So I'm trying to learn Java.

More accurately, I'm working my way through Java: A Beginner's Guide, Sixth Edition by Herbert Schildt.

Why? Reasons.

It's really driving home how I really am not a programmer.

I've dabbled before.

When I was a kid, Basic was a big thing. Of course, the Pyramids were new and we'd just come out of the last ice age, so... yeah.

It never really stuck, though. I didn't really have the head for programming as a kid. In fairness, I didn't have a head for anything that wasn't sci-fi pop culture. So it goes.

Fast-forward a chunk of time and I'm learning the basics of UNIX (oh god, vi...) and I take a class on Perl scripting.

Sweet FSM what a hellscape that became.

I can remember bits and pieces of Perl, but never really needed it on my job so the knowledge faded. I still have my O'Reilly book on Learning Perl, but it's got a layer of dust on it.

A few years back, I decided to familiarize myself with JavaScript. I picked up A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript by Mark Myers. Myers has very digestible lessons with short exercises to test one's knowledge.

I was actually doing pretty well with it. I got about halfway through, then life kicked me in the balls and I focused all my energies on getting a new job.

Then I had to learn the new job stuff, which mainly meant studying a lot of Salesforce platform stuff. Not Apex, their JavaScript knock-off, but their clicks-not-code bits.

I got my 401 certification from them and let my brain coast for the last year.

Then life came along and kicked me in the balls again.

Now I'm trying to learn Java.

Not so much to program. I mostly want to be able to read code in a fairly-common object-oriented language and understand WTF is going on.

It's not a painless process, but damn me if I'm not having a bit of fun. Once I got my first crappy little Java program to compile, it was immensely satisfying. Running it and seeing the corny message, was a warm-and-fuzzy feeling.

I'm determined to put in at least an hour every day to get through this nearly 700 page behemoth and understand this damn language.

Then, who knows? I think I'll revisit JavaScript. Maybe even look at Perl again.

Assuming my brain hasn't exploded.

Stealth Fashion

"Orwell" garments.

God, I love Kickstarter!

Raining Gremlin Piss

First my bike decides to develop an unhealthy appetite for inner-tubes. Now my eReader is kaput. What the hell?

Mass Hysteria

I'm plunging into the late 20th century at a breakneck pace! Hell, I'm skirting the edges of the 21st century now!

Not only do I finally break down and get a wireless router but now I've broken down and gotten a smartphone.

It's nothing fancy, mind you. I don't even think it has a proper brand name. Still, it's light-years more sophisticated and workable than my old cell, which I've finally just retired.

Crazy times, I tell you.

Yep. Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!

Because the Voices said so

• How to make Taser-proof clothing.
• Too far?
• You know what happens when you assume...
• This would be an interesting J.J. Abrams or Warren Ellis offering
• When companies cease in understanding their base...
• Caffeine
• Cute

Bits of things

• If you've accessed this site and get hit with some kind of weird popup/redirect thing, leave something in comments (if you're so-inclined) so I can report this to Blogspot. I have so many script-killing things in my Firefox setup that I'm not sure if this site still has the problem I saw earlier this week.
• Still tweaking and updating things to get the PC working at the level it was at before the grand crash. So far everything is working well. We'll see how this goes.
• Now reading "This Book is Full of Spiders" by "David Wong". The sequel to "John Dies at the End", this novel remains at the same level of bizarre entertainment of "Wong's" style.
• Also reading "Stormdancer" by Jay Kristoff. Japanese steampunk. Yeah. Despite that genre name, it's pretty damn entertaining.
• I've washed my hands of the hope of getting anything constructive done this weekend. After a week of being stressed-out over the PC and other things, I've decided to just fuck it all and chill out. I need decompression time, which is why I took Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday off. Time to just chill and drink a beer or two.

Adventures in Computer Disasters: Part Five

The PC is running.

Long story short: the power supply crapped out, causing the PC to shut down. This cascaded the issue by causing critical errors on the hard drive, making it nigh-impossible to boot.

Once the power supply was replaced, I was temporarily able to get into safe mode, but unable to run any kind of repair utility thanks to the errors on the hard drive.

Cue the heroic music as Ubuntu came to the rescue.

With Ubuntu loaded on a flash drive, I was able to boot an Ubuntu instance and eventually get it to the point where Ubuntu fixed the disk errors well enough that I could run the Windows Repair utility. From there, everything appears to be working... thus far. The PC passed a virus scan, so that's out of the way. Now I just wait for the other shoe to drop as I try to get to the projects I'd postponed...

Adventures in Computer Disasters - Part Four

My PC is possessed by the Devil. It's the only real explanation.

I replaced the power supply. I can boot in safe mode. It technically works, but I can't get the goddamn OS to boot properly.

Won't boot from a recovery disk. Hell, it won't boot from a bootable Ubuntu flash drive.

Won't let repair mode work. Essentially all it will do is boot in safe mode. If I'm lucky.

My repair guy is out-of-town for the holidaze and I'm... filled with all sorts of holiday joy.

Since it's a goddamn Dell, it's got no installation disks. Everything of use to reinstall the OS is squirreled away on some inaccessible partition. So what I've learned today:

• I can't restore a system image from a backup in safe mode.
• I can't boot the damn PC in anything other than safe mode.
• I can't reinstall the OS.
• I've got a giant paperweight.
• I'm never buying a Dell again. Ever.

Adventures in Computer Disasters - Part Three

Got my PC back this fine morning. Needed a new power supply. $50+ later plus payment to the repair guy, I brought my baby home and fired it up.

And it won't boot.

I swear by all the gods, I am... not happy.

At least I can now get into safe mode. It's possible I'll be able to save it. I may have to reinstall the OS. Not sure. Still, it's an improvement.

If only I knew what sacrifices the technology gods required...

Adventures in Computer Disasters - part two

Bit the bullet and took the PC to my repair guy. I have hopes he can save it. I'd rather pay a couple of bills for a repair than more for a new machine at this juncture. With luck, I'll know later today whether I'm drinking in celebration or in memory of my PC. It's possible the data on it can be saved, but I'm not really holding out that much hope.

Adventures in Computer Disasters

Yep. The PC is still giving me trouble. Won't boot. I can't even get it to a point where I can run Windows Recovery or even boot in safe mode. It sticks on WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\CLASSPNP.SYS.

A potential solution found online is to rename this file but I can't even get a command prompt going on the PC.

I should just wipe the goddamn thing and start over but there's a few files I want to try to recover and the damn Dell didn't come with installation disks anyway. It's got some separate partition that ought to allow a fresh reinstall but I can't get to the damn process to let me do the reinstall.

To say I'm irritated doesn't come close. So now I'm downloading an Ubuntu ISO and I'm going to load that on to a prepared flash drive. In theory, I can boot in Ubuntu from the flash drive and troll around the PC to see what I can do and what I can recover, if anything.

The important stuff is all backed-up, so there's that, but it would be nice to grab less-important stuff that didn't make the backups.

From there, I'm going to try to figure out how to fix the PC. If Ubuntu fires up, my first trip will be to address the CLASSPNP.SYS file, if I can manage that. If that fails... well, I'll have to track down my PC repair guy and see if he can squeeze in time to help me out. It's that or dust off, nuke the site from orbit, and buy a new goddamn PC.

I really don't want Windows 8. Sigh.