Well Hurricane Wilma landed well south of us, but she still pounded the heck out of my neighborhood with heavy winds. We live in a mobile (one constructed back in 1959 to boot) so it was a bit harrowing. Fortunately we escaped without damage (again). My new years resolution is to get the heck out of here and into a block home. My in-laws were kind enough to let us use this place to save money, but it's time to move on.
Despite the hurricane I have made some decent progress on my latest project. Not as much as I would have liked, but much more than I expected. All misc images, land vehicles and helicopters are done. Just have airplanes, infantry, and some terrains to do. This project has taught me some valuable lessons about time management and estimating. It has taken more than 3 times longer than expected. Of course this is due largely to my inability to make cuts where needed and to keep piling work onto myself. The current project is at a staggering 198 images with another estimated 140-150 images to complete. Nobody can say I don't provide a good value to my customers!
In related news my external hard drive case arrived. It's not much to look at, but it seems to be working nifty and it puts my backup drive back into commission which is a relief. I am still worried that the drive may have physical problems or sector errors so I need to dig out some diagnostic software (or find some online) and put my mind at piece. Until I do I am not using it as my primary backup. I may grab another case as an early Christmas gift to myself and double up on redundancy which would definitely put my mind at ease (God I'm such a packrat!)
Oh and saw the doctor again. She was quite perturbed that I had not gotten my blood tests done yet. What can I say I've been busy and I hate needles. I do need to get it done though in the next 2 weeks. She upped my prescription to Advair 250mg. I gotta say it's good stuff for people who are suffering from any kind of asthma type malady.
Well that's it for now...
until Halloween! Muwahahaha!!!!
Monday, October 24, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
The volume in drive H:\ is Dirty...
When it rains, it pours.
I had no sooner lamented about how hard it was to keep up with everything, when my computer's UPS ("uninterruptible" power supply - sic) quit out on me.
Not only did it die, but it died hard. It did so without any warning and completely cut the power to the PC and all the external devices.
I couldn't get it back up so had to scrounge a power strip from some long forgotten dusty corner under a desk in the kids room. When the system came back up I was horrified to find my external USB drive failed. It was making sick grinding noises - never a good sign for electronic equipment.
This to me is bad. Really, really bad. I keep all of my flatlands stuff on there.
Now like a good boy I do keep backups. I have some old CD burns I made a few months ago, but more importantly I have a backup that is more recent on another drive (thank you ThinkSync!), but it still meant several halfway decent days worth of work were gone... flushed out into the ethereal toilet. :(
Talk about feeling like you were kicked while being down. I'm working hard to get ahead and all that work just gets wiped out. uggg. I momentarily contemplated giving up and taking a leave of absence from the computer for a while.
Then I got my senses and second wind back. I Rolled up my sleeves and dived in.
Even after removing every screw I could find, I still had to tear the damn plastic casing apart to get at the drive. Hooked it directly into the PC in true Frankenstein fashion. Crossed my fingers, toes and every other flexible appendage and rebooted the machine.
Uh oh! Blue screen-of-death. This could be bad.
"The volume in drive H:\ is Dirty"
That's a first for me. Never saw that message in 20 some years of tinkering with computers. It looked ominous. I tried to decide if there was pr0n stored on that drive and if so how dirty it was, but before I could come to a conclusion Windows began crunching numbers and doing... well... something. I'm still not sure what it did, but it ground through the drive 1 painful percentage point at a time. 10 minutes later there were no other messages and I could explore the drive.
Needless to say I spent a great deal of time (until 2 AM) getting the most critical bits and pieces forklifted off that drive and tucked in other places. It was a setback, but thank goodness not a horrible one.
Today I have a new UPS (from a DIFFERENT manufacturer) and thanks to eBay a new external case is on it's way so I can try and rebuild my lovely H:\ drive and put here back up on top of the PC where she belongs and not dangling around inside held willy-nilly by cables and power wires. If things go well I may invest in another external shell and put one of these old harddrives I have laying around to good use as well ;)
In the mean time I have got to get my steam back and figure out what karmic deed I need to do to get the scales back in my favor so I can get some work done!
I had no sooner lamented about how hard it was to keep up with everything, when my computer's UPS ("uninterruptible" power supply - sic) quit out on me.
Not only did it die, but it died hard. It did so without any warning and completely cut the power to the PC and all the external devices.
I couldn't get it back up so had to scrounge a power strip from some long forgotten dusty corner under a desk in the kids room. When the system came back up I was horrified to find my external USB drive failed. It was making sick grinding noises - never a good sign for electronic equipment.
This to me is bad. Really, really bad. I keep all of my flatlands stuff on there.
Now like a good boy I do keep backups. I have some old CD burns I made a few months ago, but more importantly I have a backup that is more recent on another drive (thank you ThinkSync!), but it still meant several halfway decent days worth of work were gone... flushed out into the ethereal toilet. :(
Talk about feeling like you were kicked while being down. I'm working hard to get ahead and all that work just gets wiped out. uggg. I momentarily contemplated giving up and taking a leave of absence from the computer for a while.
Then I got my senses and second wind back. I Rolled up my sleeves and dived in.
Even after removing every screw I could find, I still had to tear the damn plastic casing apart to get at the drive. Hooked it directly into the PC in true Frankenstein fashion. Crossed my fingers, toes and every other flexible appendage and rebooted the machine.
Uh oh! Blue screen-of-death. This could be bad.
"The volume in drive H:\ is Dirty"
That's a first for me. Never saw that message in 20 some years of tinkering with computers. It looked ominous. I tried to decide if there was pr0n stored on that drive and if so how dirty it was, but before I could come to a conclusion Windows began crunching numbers and doing... well... something. I'm still not sure what it did, but it ground through the drive 1 painful percentage point at a time. 10 minutes later there were no other messages and I could explore the drive.
Needless to say I spent a great deal of time (until 2 AM) getting the most critical bits and pieces forklifted off that drive and tucked in other places. It was a setback, but thank goodness not a horrible one.
Today I have a new UPS (from a DIFFERENT manufacturer) and thanks to eBay a new external case is on it's way so I can try and rebuild my lovely H:\ drive and put here back up on top of the PC where she belongs and not dangling around inside held willy-nilly by cables and power wires. If things go well I may invest in another external shell and put one of these old harddrives I have laying around to good use as well ;)
In the mean time I have got to get my steam back and figure out what karmic deed I need to do to get the scales back in my favor so I can get some work done!
Monday, October 10, 2005
Out to Sea...
Not sure what they call the effect, but I remember reading about how the tide can pull a swimmer out to sea even though they think they are swimming closer to the shore. Each cresting wave actually pulls the person further away as they struggle to swim closer.
That's how my life feels right now. No matter how much I get done I turn around and there's twice as much more to do... at work and at home. It's just not all coming together as I hoped.
In a few days it will be a full month since I started working on my next project which I thought would take two weeks. Right now I'm at maybe 50% even after banging away all weekend. I'll try working hard this week as well and hopefully I can tip the scales in my favor. Two weeks ago I jokingly told Preston on the phone "I should have it done this week, which means more like three weeks". Sadly I couldn't have been closer to the truth. The part that gets under my craw is how I mismanaged my time. I *should* have focused on a nice Halloween themed Flatlands set last month to go with the holiday instead of spinning my wheels. I can picture a sheet of classic horror monsters - ghosts, frankensteins, mummies, werewolves, skeletons... *sigh* Ah well there's always next year. Instead I'm working on tanks and helicopters. Feels a bit unseasonal heh ;)
At this rate I may end up strapping AIM-9D's and afterburners on a certain stealth black painted sleigh cause if I don't get the lead out that's when my project will finally be completed!?!
That's how my life feels right now. No matter how much I get done I turn around and there's twice as much more to do... at work and at home. It's just not all coming together as I hoped.
In a few days it will be a full month since I started working on my next project which I thought would take two weeks. Right now I'm at maybe 50% even after banging away all weekend. I'll try working hard this week as well and hopefully I can tip the scales in my favor. Two weeks ago I jokingly told Preston on the phone "I should have it done this week, which means more like three weeks". Sadly I couldn't have been closer to the truth. The part that gets under my craw is how I mismanaged my time. I *should* have focused on a nice Halloween themed Flatlands set last month to go with the holiday instead of spinning my wheels. I can picture a sheet of classic horror monsters - ghosts, frankensteins, mummies, werewolves, skeletons... *sigh* Ah well there's always next year. Instead I'm working on tanks and helicopters. Feels a bit unseasonal heh ;)
At this rate I may end up strapping AIM-9D's and afterburners on a certain stealth black painted sleigh cause if I don't get the lead out that's when my project will finally be completed!?!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
