December 11, 2012

  • A Belated Entry

    The Entry below is one I was working on back in August but it got buried under a mountain of other things I was doing and forgotten in the documents folder up until a few moments ago. While I don't remember exactly where I was going with the post I figured I'd at least post what I spent so much time writing, with a little editing in the parts that smell of beer now that I read them again. The lines in italics were not part of the original post but have been added in now for clarity.

    There's been quite a lot going on between my last blog entry and now ... but that's fairly normal when my average posting frequency is three months. I need to keep better track of these things! I'm considering starting a daily T-shirt segment since I get a lot of comments on my collection of amusing shirts. I'll test that out starting tomorrow I think. This plan has not ended up getting off the ground yet.

    So, on to the activities report. I'll just write things as they come to mind because there's a lot I need to get untangled in my mind.

    My aunt gave me her old computer a little over a month ago. She got a new one and, despite this hand-me-down being six years old, in terms of hardware it is much more advanced than the laptop that I have been working with. Thus I gladly accepted it. Little did I know that there would be one little snag that would drain a lot of the excitement out of getting a new device. I've spent almost all of the time since receiving it not using it as much as wrestling it (figuratively) as one would a large, toothy alligator The play-by-play is in the next paragraph, so if that isn't your thing you can just skip over it. I apparently never finished writing the play-by-play at the time, but read on for some of the insanity, at least.

    First of all, when I first got the computer it was running Vista and it was very bogged down with all kinds of junk that my aunt had on there. The first thing I thought I would do is update the computer to Windows 7. Since I didn't want any of the old files on the computer to carry over I went with a clean install – unfortunately that meant that all of the drivers were thrown out like the baby with the bathwater. So, despite having a very fast install of 7, there were a lot of hardware problems. After downloading and patching for several days with mixed results I finally came to the conclusion that it was not a good idea to install Windows 7 on this computer since it was designed for Vista. I then proceeded to completely restore the system to factory defaults. The thing was at that point running a six-year-old build of an operating system that was about as stable as I am after a Green Dinosaur. A couple more days of patching ensued until, two service packs and almost three-hundred individual updates later, I had a computer that would consistently start up without flipping me the middle finger. It was at this point any sensible person would think, "now that I have it stable perhaps I should back it up so that I don't have to do this all over again." I guess I wasn't in a very sensible mood on that day. I had scanned the disk and found a couple of bad sectors so I deemed it time to replace the hard drive – and when I say replace I mean it's upgrade time!! Recently the prices on SSD's (solid state drive) have been coming down into the generally affordable range and what better way to spruce up an already impressive (by my standards) PC than by making it even faster?! I will expand more upon my love of SSD's in a later paragraph (again, I didn't get around to it, but maybe I'll expand this post at a later date). For now, let me just say that when copying the data from one drive to another using modern disk cloning software everything will undoubtedly go smoothly, that is, as long as you make sure that the partitions and file system are set the way you want them BEFORE putting the drive into the computer and starting to use it. I, on the other hand, copied everything over to the new drive, put it in the system, booted it up, and THEN decided to shrink the main partition – you know, the one with all the really important OS files on it – which resulted in ... so many long, tedious, headache-filled nights >_< 

    That's all there is right now. It's not a bad place to end that little rant but there is more to the story. In sort, I managed to get the computer up and running – it's actually the one I am typing on now – and boy was the upgrade worth it! Booting only takes about ten or fifteen seconds from the press of the power button until the desktop is displayed. I'll try and write more about the process later. For right now I've got a job application to complete.

    'Till next time,
    PEACE~!