Sometimes Murphy Takes Over...

I really dislike it when things that are supposed to make your life easier stop working or start working wonky-ish. For example, Google Desktop Search is something I had gotten used to. It helped me find stuff I needed to find *right away* and had useful links to let me know about news, incoming emails, gmails, etc. All of a sudden a week or so ago, it just stops working. No big error code, no computer blowup. I just booted up the computer and the Google sidebar that I was used to seeing doesn't appear. Five or ten minutes later, the message "Google Search did not startup successfully" appears. Uh. You think? I go searching for non-existant answers, fire off an email to Google, post something in the Google Groups group for Google Desktop and get a great big nothing for the effort. Well, some others chimed in to say that they were having the same problem. After the week or so (and no response of any kind from Google), I sort of got used to not having Google Desktop. Today, I check that post in Google Groups and an official response from Google was there! Woot! The guy asked for four things to be checked. Three of which were no-brainers for me. The fourth "make sure your hard drive is defragmented" sounded unusual but for funs and giggles, I decided to give it a go.

That's where Murphy Law kicked in.

I try to defragment my hard drive and nothing happens. I mean, I push the button, the window sort of freezes for a while, and then it comes back, but obviously nothing happened. By the way, did I mention that I decided to try to fix this right before heading home? Yeah, that was stupid in retrospect. I google for fixes, trying all sorts of things to try to get defrag to run, but nothing works. Oh great. Good timing! So I started a chkdsk /f as I pack up and head home and realize that it's going to take a loooooong time for that thing to run. I ended up taking the laptop home with the lid open and the chkdsk running. I got home placed the laptop in a chair and plugged it in while the chkdsk still ran.

Murphy's Law decided to kick things up a notch, to raise the stakes, if you will.

I go get the mail and find a notice from the IRS placing a lien on *MY* house that came via Certified Mail. No joke. Of course, it's a mistake. But nothing like a notice from the IRS to top of your day. I make the phone call that takes 30 minutes of my life and instructs me of what documentation is needed and all the places that it has to be sent. What fun. What a waste of time.

I ate a quick dinner - meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green bean and corn casserole. Mmmmm. It was good, and I hope I let Christy know I enjoyed it. Back to the laptop, which has just finished booting. I'm guessing the chkdsk went fine, I never saw a results screen so I'm guessing. Now, back to the defrag issue. I recall seeing one "fix" of searching for dfrg* and copying the Service Pack versions into \windows\system32, then re-register defrag's dlls and then re-attempt to defrag. What do you know? That actually worked. That was the good news. The bad news? The hard drive was really, really fragmented. It took nearly four hours to complete.

The Murphy's Law version bad news? I un-installed Google Desktop Search after all that, rebooted, re-installed it and............................. it still didn't work. Bleh. Off I go to let the Google guy know that *that* didn't work for me.

-----

Looking at these posts, you'd think I complain a lot. Yeesh, I hope I don't. I guess I'm using this blog as my sounding board: Let the steam off here and no one else gets burned...

And now I need to go find that stupid documentation...

Read More

Dean's Blog Is Up!

Well, that just means that it's up and running. Not that anything has been posted there.

No comment on that title... ;)

Ok, Dean. The ball is fully in your court now!

Read More

Blogger.com Troubles

Uggh. I've been trying to get Dean's blog switched over to the Grace Bible Church domain, but it's been a struggle with blogger.com having all sorts of trouble. I think that I'm finished for the time being (at least I hope so!)

Maybe now I can get back to some real work.

The bad of the morning? I think I might have messed up my Google account by signing up for the Blogger beta there (instead of waiting and transferring over this blogger.com account when the beta comes out of beta.)

Read More

Don't Ya Just Hate... [What I'm Reading]

When you start a book that is so dull / boring that you want to put it down and hide it somewhere. If there's any part of me that is obsessive/compulsive, it's that I *must* finish any book that I've started. The book that has caused this post is Twenty Decisive Battles of the World. Why in the world I started this book I have no idea... The battle of Marathon is the first battle described and I'm having quite a time getting going on it. So far, the major points I've gleaned are: Athenian armies numbered approximately 10,000 with 1,000 Plataens and they were up against a veteran Persian army of approximately 60,000 that had landed and camped out at Marathon on the shores of what is now Greece. That's it. That's as far as I have gotten. I tried to keep going, but the names and the politics that have been injected into the storyline are killing the book - at least for me... I started this book over again last night. (I had a premature start on it previously that stopped at page 2.) I'm hoping I can work my way through it tonight. Goal of two battles finished tonight (plus or minus 10 days to finish the book)...

By the way, I'm purposefully expanding my blog to have more than just picture stuff. (Not for your benefit! :P ) Look for other stuff to follow...

Read More

More Albums Available Now

 

As I go through the older photos and organize/clean 'em up, I get to see how much Christian has changed in just a short while. I also find some really cute pictures. The one above is pretty representative of the Christian Pushups set.

Enjoy! 

Read More

New Albums Posted

Ok, I've reworked the already published images, and have linked them on the right side as Photo Albums. I've also uploaded some older images that I am just now getting around to... The new albums just uploaded are 2004-07-01 Christian at RainGard and 2004-06-29 Christian Playing on Bed.

Teaser image:



Enjoy!

Read More

Reworking the Photo Albums

I'm in the process of reworking the photo albums here. So if you're looking to check out the images, just wait a little bit. I should be done sometime this afternoon.

Yes, we missed church today. Christian is still a bit under the weather and I debated for a bit whether or not I should attend. I should have, but I think after I took me medicine and laid down for a bit - the "bit" became a "while" and eventually didn't leave me enough time to get ready. It's still no excuse.

Read More

Aquarium Maintenance

One last post for today - before I get completely computer worn out. (I still have recent digital photos that I need to process.)

I did some maintenance on the Christian's aquarium tonight. On Tuesday or Wednesday, I'm not sure which, the power was interrupted and when it was restored, the aquarium started making a horrible noise. Worse than the noise was the fact that the water was not being pumped up into the filtration area. I cut a small hole in the uptake inlet strainer and placed a small airstone - with the air pump running, just enough water was pushed up the tube to keep the carbon filter wet - but not to keep the biowheel running. (I have an Eclipse System 12.) I ordered a replacement strainer, replacement impeller, and replacement impeller housing. The parts were delivered on Thursday, but I didn't get a chance to swap out the parts until today. Pictures of the parts can be found in this photo album. I've swapped them out, but after doing so, I think I probably should have ordered a replacement pump and filtration housing. Water is being pumped through the filtration and the biowheel is spinning again, but it doesn't sound that great. Oh well.

Since the last Cichlid baby is growing in that tank, I probably should be thinking and planning for at least a 29 gallon tank as a more permanent home for him. I guess I need to update my wishlist to reflect that too...

Read More

Do You Need Something?

I'm tired of the mounds of junk I have around the house and my office. Since coming back from Walt Disney World, I decided to finish off some pin collections for Christian that were started there. The easiest way (and the way I did it) was by purchasing the missing pins off of eBay. I was able to complete this collection. I'm not sure how Christy or I will display them, but some of them are pretty neat, and I have the boxes for them too.

Anyways, back to my junk story. After making those purchases on eBay, I figured "Hey, I have plenty of junk around the house! Why shouldn't I eBay some of it away?" So without further ado, I present to you my eBay store. (I'm also adding a link over to the right, just in case you do need something I have!) Well, at least when I have something for sell. I'm just getting started on this, but I have already sold one Toshiba 16MB SD card and an Echo Indigo PCMCIA audio card. It's really easy to eBay the stuff, the only hard part is taking a good couple of pictures and processing them for the eBay auction. I purchased a Canon mini table tripod to help with taking the pictures. Taking decent up-close pictures is so much easier with it. Just frame the shot, make sure the lighting is good, hit the 2-sec delay for picture and two seconds later, *click*.

Speaking of which, I need to process a couple of pictures and setup another auction at eBay.

Read More

I Don't Like Football

It's not that I dislike the game, in particular, or even the NFL. It's that I can't stand the nervousness that overcomes me when Auburn plays. I really wish I didn't care so much, and I honestly don't know why I care so much. Maybe it's just a side effect or something that comes with being born and growing up in the state of Alabama. About the only way I can watch an Auburn football game these days is by watching the replay of a game that they already won. Is that bad or what?

Today was just a perfect example. A team that Auburn should beat easily and they have to rally late to win. It's games like today's that irk me to no end. At least it was a win. Auburn survives to another weeked. My concern is that if Auburn plays like today again, and the games against Georgia and Alabama are going to be laughers for Georgia and Alabama... Oh well...

Read More

Ring Bearer News

I can't say much other than I am one proud Dada. I just could not have scripted my son doing any better than he did at tonight's wedding. He did even better than I witnessed! As to what I witnessed: when it was time for him to walk the aisle, he came down the aisle holding the ring pillow behind his back. (What do you expect? He's a three year old!) Then he turned to the right where he saw Christy and I and came on over to us. If that had been it, and he had done nothing else tonight, I know I would have still been happy. But Christy and I asked him if he would go back and take his place beside the groom, Shawn. He said no initially, then Christy asked if he wanted to watch Christa, the bride, come down the aisle. To this, he answered "Yes!" and we told him to go to Shawn and stand in front of him, which he immediately did. He stayed in that general vicinity through the presentation of the bride, the opening prayer, and the walking up the steps. After a short while, he made his way down the steps and back over to Christy and I. At that point, we asked him if he wanted to go to the nursery to play. He decided that he wanted to, but he wanted to go with Mimi (Grandmother Holliman). He and Mimi made their way out of the sanctuary without making any noise, and Christy and I finally exhaled.

In some ways, I was completely shocked. For him to act so well, and be as quiet as he way. Just shocked.

Afterward, I found out that he had done better than I had witnessed. It turns out that he had accidentally left toward the stage before his time - before the bridesmaids. He was told by the wedding director that he needed to come back and wait, that it wasn't his time yet, and he turned around and came back to the church foyer to wait his turn. Without making a peep! I'm wondering if someone had candy in the foyer...

As for the time when he was standing quietly during the introduction and presentation of the bride, I found out that Shawn *was* giving him candy. Well, that's one way to keep a little one from making noise. :) Still, I don't think Christian could have really done any better. Both Christy and I are quite proud of that little fella!

As for the wedding? To be honest, it felt shorter than I thought it was going to be. It actually felt like an appropriate length wedding - not too long, not too short. (I'm sure that my Dad would argue that there is no such thing as a too short wedding....) That could have been because for the first part of the wedding, I was intently focused on my son. But as his role was over early, maybe not. It was a nice wedding and it performed the main function that weddings are supposed to perform - the marrying of a couple. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Shawn Murray, and thank you for letting my son take part in your ceremony.

The photographers took a ton of pictures, and I hope, a good number of Christian. If Christy and I can purchase them, I'll eventually get around to scanning them and maybe post one or two here.


--------------------


I do need to make a confession of sorts. One that didn't hit me until halfway through tonight. I was talking to Dean, the pastor, before the ceremony and I asked him about weddings that he had performed. I recall that he said that this was his 12th or 13th. What I should confess is that I then asked about the non-weddings - the weddings that he was asked to perform, but didn't. Why do we humans - why did I - focus only on the disasters of life? Why is it that no one ever wants to be part of the train wreck, yet none can take their eyes off of one? Dean, if you're reading this: I'm sorry. Especially at a time that is meant for celebration, I injected some thoughts of disaster. I shouldn't have. I should have asked about the celebrations, the weddings where two individuals became one - successfully. I pray that the wedding of tonight becomes one of those success stories, and is asked about in years to come.

Read More

Late Start Today

I hate TMJ. Worse, I hate the drugs that you're given to help it. After that last post last night / this morning, I took the Flexeril 10mg and Ibuprofin 800mg to help with the pain and stiffness. Can you say "wiped out"? I didn't even move until after 9:00AM this morning. Even then I was groggy. So I made it to work *LATE!*

Sorry, Dad. It wasn't intentional, I promise.

Nose to the grindstone (and no lunch for this late arrival.)

Read More

No Doubt, Little Boy Has Something

I figure since I'm up, I might as well post something.

Yes, it's 1AM. I just put Christian back into his bed. Earlier (if you read the previous post) he had been whining and crying - and he was running a fever. Hot enough that you could feel it through his clothes. Christy and I laid him down in our bed and did that parent thing - rubbing his forehead, patting his stomach, and finally he feel asleep. Of course, that's part of the problem. The only bed that can fit the three of us - Christy, Christian and I - is a honest to goodness king bed (we have a queen size one here). But a king bed just means that either Christy or I gets to sleep well: Christian has this knack for turning sideways and pushing against you with his feet... Anyway, I just went back with the ear thermometer and had Christy check his temp - 97.7. His head was a bit damp too. Well, whatever he's got at least the fever is broken.

I took him back to his bed. I had to wrangle the little fella to get him laying longways with the bed - that knack of his works when he's by himself too. He fell fast asleep, though I'm sure that will change very shortly. (Every morning, he tries to get up at 4AM and he never stays in his bed past 6:30.)

Oh well. Another short night of sleep for Dadda...

Read More

I Think I'm Going to Be Sick...

You know that gut feeling that you get when you know you've screwed up? And how it gets worse the more you attempt to fix or as every new attempt to fix doesn't just fail, each attempt shows that the failure was worse than you initially thought it was. (<- Nasty, run-on sentence! Small attempt at levity.) Well, I've got that feeling. Actually, I've had that feeling since 2PM today.

Around 2PM I was feeling pretty good about the progress I had made in organizing some new photos and in re-organizing the old ones. But then I looked at one of the links in the old blog sidebar "Pictures of Christian" - as it was on the old site. (You're probably noticing that the link is not here anymore...) I decided that I should go ahead and make sure that all those older and already published photos had made it into Picasa. And that's when I noticed that first thumbnail dated around 04-08-2004 that had no equivalent in my saved photos on this computer - the feeling hit. I took no time in going to the old hosting site (now only available via this IP address) and downloading each and every photo. I started looking for matches and what became more and more worrisome was the growing number of non-matches. I ended up with almost 200 thumbnails (from the previous site) that don't match and cannot be found anywhere on this computer. Judging by the names of the thumbnails and how some numbers in sequences are skipped, I figured that I was really missing 250 - 300 photos.

Ok. That's bad, but not the end of the world, I thought. I was thinking I had backups in three or four places - my desktop at work, the private backup folder in "My Documents" stored on the RainGard server, a folder on my home server, the full laptop backups on my home 320GB external drive, my smaller but more recent backups onto my NSLU2 server at home, or at worse case even on my old iPod. (Heh, make that five or six places!) So I felt bad, but I felt like I had odds on chances of finding the photos. I first checked the desktop folder where I kept daily backups for the longest time - hmmm, I must have deleted the whole backup folder that last time I had to restore my drive. Phooey! Ok, check the private folder on RainGard's server - hmmm, I must have stopped making that backup because of the amount of disk space I was using - needless to say I deleted the backup as well... Doh! I got home and checked the folder on my home server - nope, that backup pretty well matches my current photo folder, meaning that backup is a post-2nd death and resurrection of this laptop backup. Dagnabbit. Of course, the feeling started to get worse. I wanted to check the iPod but couldn't because it has a firewire interface and only the desktop at work has firewire. I fired up the "sometimes works, sometimes doesn't" 320GB external drive at home and promptly found out that the full laptop backups were made with IBM Rescue and Recovery v2 - of which backups cannot be read by the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery v3.10 on the laptop now. UGGHHH! It was now time for the wedding rehearsal so this bad feeling just had to wait.

After the wedding rehearsal, we headed to Top of the River to eat. (Christian is the ring bearer and at three years old, I'm not sure what to expect out of him tomorrow seeing how *well* his part in the rehearsal went tonight... Note to self: Set expectations really low and I can only be happy at what happens!) What a meal at Top of the River! My thanks to the groom's father! That was excellent and fun. And a needed respite from the day's events...

I decided I'd stop back by work and check out the iPod backup to see if the photos might be there. Carp! Nada, nothing, not a thing. But Hey! My old IBM Rescue and Recovery CD - a bootable one at that *and* it should be able to read the backups on the 320GB drive at home. I hurried home and booted up the RnR and what can I say, I'm shooting 100% on this thing. Every backup is POST 1st death of the laptop - which is to say that nothing of worth was there. Auuuuuggggh.

Oh, and didn't I say earlier that it got worse? I didn't? Well, I should have. You see, I was able to find the catalog file from the Adobe Photoshop Album that I had been using, and I installed the latest starter edition of Adobe Photoshop Album to look through it. That bad feeling, oh yeah, it's really bad right now. I found that not only did I only have those ~200 thumbnails of images that I published from the time period of March 2004 through May 2004. I found that I'm also missing photos from (and I'm really guessing here) around August 2003 through May 2004. Yes, I really want to go puke now. It's hard to even type that. The first eight months of my son's life! I know I was taking 30-40 pictures a week sometimes! Oh, puh-lease just let me puke - if only that would take away this feeling.

I had to take a break there. If not just to catch my breath, to take care of Christian. He might have caught something earlier tonight. He's got a bit of fever and was crying out as the fever started to break. That does at least give some reality to this - that the here and now is much more important that the mistake(s) or even personal triumphs of the past. I do feel some better just after writing all this. Like pouring out my angst (only a few people read this, thank goodness!) gives a little relief too. I honestly have no idea / earthly clue what happened to cause so many pictures to go *poof*. EVERY single backup looked exactly the same as my current "My Pictures" setup. I can only guess that the first laptop death, where I knew I had lost some financial work and etc., must have taken away all those pictures and I just didn't realize it because I hadn't been organizing or publishing photos in a while. Bleh!

I should say that I do have one last hope on the missing pictures: Christy's iMac. Most all of those earlier digital photos correspond to the time before I got my own digital camera (the Dimage Xg). And Christy had uploaded most of her photos to the iMac. Unfortunately, her iMac currently has a PSU problem - something which AppleCare Suppost said will require us taking it to an Apple service center to have it fixed. I guess that project / to do item just got high priority! (Please, please, let the photos be there!)

I'm off to bed...

PS. I just made a local copy of the existing My Pictures folder (at least what images I have now will have current backups!)

Read More

Nope, No Pastor Dean Blog Yet...

Whelp, here I am blogging and chatting with my pastor at the same time.

The "No news is good news" moment of the day is here and gone - Dean is waaaaay too busy to start his blog up yet. I mean, only a wedding, a birthday, and his mother in town for him to attend to... I know he can multi-task, but I'll give him a pass for the time being. He did mention that he could make his first blog post in the recovery stage of this week.

Dean, I'm holding your feet to the fire on that one... ;)

And as far as the pictures and organization/posting? I finished up organizing and captioning all of the pictures in Picasa that I had previously organized under Photoshop Album. Now I just need to figure out the best way for publishing those...

Read More

And in Other News...

Oh yeah. The other reason that I'm re-starting the blog: I've started helping my church with a website and I've encouraged our pastor - Dean Wood - to start a blog there. I didn't think it would be very nice of me to be pushing him toward blogging unless I maintained one as well.

If I'm successful in encouraging him, I'll be sure to link his blog from here.

Which reminds me, I need to link the church's website from here too!

Read More

Blog & Picture Update in Progress

It's been a long time. A really long time.

To tell you the truth, one of the reasons I stopped blogging was the time factor. I really only wanted to use this blog as a place to put my latest thoughts and pictures online. Thoughts = easy (I type at a decent rate). Pictures = unbelievably hard - especially in terms of time. And that time became an issue due to the way I stored and organized pictures locally on my laptop - with Adobe Photoshop Album. I loved the organization that Photoshop Album enforced with my pictures, but I hated to do the actual organization. Furthermore, using Photoshop Album meant that I went through the following process just to post any image:

To post a picture, I would first take the original picture, rename it to something that made sense, clean it up (remove artifacts, crop the image, or just remove red eye), then make a thumbnail of the cleaned up picture, edit the appropriate .html file that it would be linked to, upload the image, upload the thumbnail, and finally upload the .html file. I would then post something in the blog about the picture(s). LOTS of work. After a while, I had more pictures than I could ever possibly sort through, not to mention do the above to publish.

So what has happened between that last post (June 27, 2005????) and now?

For one thing, the way I am starting to organize photos (and re-organize the older photos) has changed dramatically. The biggest reason for this change? Google Picasa. Picasa is so easy to use and does everything that I was doing manually - AUTOMATICALLY! The only part of the process that requires any kind of thought process for me is the naming of the pictures. I can do that easily and it doesn't take that much time either.

If you'll bear with me (for the next couple of weeks I presume), I'll be re-publishing my old photos, and blogging! and publishing newer images.

Stay Tuned!

As a teaser, you can check out the following Picasa generated albums:

• GBC Easter Egg Hunt


• Safety Posters

Read More