The Vent and Rant Thread

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

...
I have been thinking about getting an external hard drive as more and more of my pictures, music, and now books are on the laptop. let us know what you think of it

I have one largish (500G) extrnal drive, one portable external (320G) and a DVD burner. Most everything important goes on each and much of it is also on my Acer Netbook. I use Beyond Compare to (manually) compare/copy to all of them.

[Katti's Cat]

I'm going to a winterball tonite. With ball gown and all. What a buha that was to organise: the dress, the jewelley, the matching nailpolish, lipstick, makeup shoes, handbag etc pp.

As the ball is in Germany and my OH still in Oz, I organised myself a dance partner. Or so I thought. Emailed him and "yes, I am stil interested, call me" came the reply. So I did. Didn't pick the brightest bulb out of the pack - the direction on the entry card I emailed him didn't tell him much (although apparently he is local).

"Call me to discuss" came an email from him. "Problem with internet" was in the email. So I am calling, and calling, and calling. Mobi switched off. Sending emails with contact phone numbers - no reply, no email. Disappeared from the face of the Earth.

So it looks as if I am going to the ball WITHOUT someone. Great, dressed to the nines, freezing my behind off. I am sooooo shitty right now, only cure will be a good sip of the bottle. Might make me happy and not caring that I will have to dance the waltz (Viennese Waltz) by myself.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

I'm going to a winterball tonite. With ball gown and all. What a buha that was to organise: the dress, the jewelley, the matching nailpolish, lipstick, makeup shoes, handbag etc pp.

As the ball is in Germany and my OH still in Oz, I organised myself a dance partner. Or so I thought. Emailed him and "yes, I am stil interested, call me" came the reply. So I did. Didn't pick the brightest bulb out of the pack - the direction on the entry card I emailed him didn't tell him much (although apparently he is local).

"Call me to discuss" came an email from him. "Problem with internet" was in the email. So I am calling, and calling, and calling. Mobi switched off. Sending emails with contact phone numbers - no reply, no email. Disappeared from the face of the Earth.

So it looks as if I am going to the ball WITHOUT someone. Great, dressed to the nines, freezing my behind off. I am sooooo shitty right now, only cure will be a good sip of the bottle. Might make me happy and not caring that I will have to dance the waltz (Viennese Waltz) by myself.

MEN!

[kindlekitten]

ahhhhh! so sorry! *pets* I was stood up for the Military Ball once and as it was a more or less command performance and I had gone through the same hassle of arranging everything I really didn't have a choice. I had a remarkably good time however! many of the gallant young officers ensured I was not a wall flower! (and pissed off some wives and girlfriends royally as well!)

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

ahhhhh! so sorry! *pets* I was stood up for the Military Ball once and as it was a more or less command performance and I had gone through the same hassle of arranging everything I really didn't have a choice. I had a remarkably good time however! many of the gallant young officers ensured I was not a wall flower! (and pissed off some wives and girlfriends royally as well!)

Oh, I feel your pain. Was in similar situation - although I was the girlfriend at the time. Managed to have heaps fun despite my escort being stiff as a plasterboard.

Hope for similar tonite.

[Sparrow]

Originally Posted by zelda_pinwheel

1. kitten jumped from the table to my shoulder about 1 meter away. problem : i was completely naked at the time, having just got out of the shower. i had scratches down the entire length of my back, since she tried to hold on as she slipped. ouch.

Pfft, that's an old dodge:

"I’ve had my face scratched myself, though I’m a single man, and I know what that is to last, and the awkwardness one has to go through in saying one’s been playing with spiteful kittens, and such-like."

Mary Elizabeth Braddon 'The Trail of the Serpent' (1892)

[kindlekitten]

we had a raccoon when I was growing up. hand raised it from about 48 hours old so of course I was Mama, littermate, sun, moon and everything else. raccoons will "tree" when frightened. their claws are not retractable and quite sharp. I was on the "tree" end of quite a few incidents. those hurt like a sumbitch

[pilotbob]

Originally Posted by kennyc

I'm sorry DGM. I learned this lesson about 20 years ago and am never completely happy unless my important stuff is backed up on at least 2 different media.

Same here sort of. I use time machine for local backups to an external drive. I also use dropbox which contains most of my documents and stuff. In addition to syncing with 3 PCs it also keeps stuff in the "cloud". So at least all that data is in 4 places.

DG - There is something you might consider. Dropbox will "backup" your ebook collection for you. It is free up to 2GB of data.

I do plan to get Crash Plan set up in January.

BOb

[kazbates]

Why does everyone insist on external hard drives or storage web sites? I back up all my ebooks on a flashdrive that I keep in a safe location. Of course, my husband backs up all our computers (we have 8 at the moment) on the 2TB external hard drive, but I would really like to know why no one mentions the flash drives. Is there something inherently wrong with them that would make them a poor choice?

@ DGma ~ The same thing happened to me with one of my first laptops. We were able to retrieve most of the data off of the damaged hard drive, but I lost one of the best recipes for pound cake that I've ever made. It was given to me by a woman who had experimented with the recipe for years before she got it "just right". I still moan about that loss every time I start to make a pound cake.

@ K C ~ Don't let the poor excuse for a man get you down. I bet you have much more fun on your own. When I was younger and BH (before husband) I much preferred showing up on my own (or, more accurately, with a group of friends). We always seemed to have the better time than those who came with dates. Have a great time.

[kindlekitten]

my dog just came into heat meaning she cannot go to the kennel I had arranged for her to go to while I am gone, and of course this time of year, there are NO openings ANYWHERE!

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Why does everyone insist on external hard drives or storage web sites? I back up all my ebooks on a flashdrive that I keep in a safe location. Of course, my husband backs up all our computers (we have 8 at the moment) on the 2TB external hard drive, but I would really like to know why no one mentions the flash drives. Is there something inherently wrong with them that would make them a poor choice?
....

Nothing wrong at all if it will hold all your stuff. I have a lot more than eboos to back up -- primarily mp3's, photographs and artwork that take up a lot of space - photos alone are 212 GB.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by kindlekitten

my dog just came into heat meaning she cannot go to the kennel I had arranged for her to go to while I am gone, and of course this time of year, there are NO openings ANYWHERE!

Ouch! The poor thing. My niece's little Yorkie just came into heat for the first time and she bought the cutest little "diaper" for it. Of course, I think the dog weighs all of 4 pounds.

[kazbates]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Nothing wrong at all if it will hold all your stuff. I have a lot more than eboos to back up -- primarily mp3's, photographs and artwork that take up a lot of space - photos alone are 212 GB.

I separate my ebooks, pictures, etc. on to different flashdrives. I'm a bit obsessive compulsive and like things in their own little "folders". The fact that flashdrives have gotten so cheap makes it easier to do, of course. I was shocked when I went to buy my husband the 2TB EHD and paid less than $200 for it. It made me worry that some new type of technology is going to hit the market and his new drive would be "so yesterday".

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by kazbates

Why does everyone insist on external hard drives or storage web sites? I back up all my ebooks on a flashdrive that I keep in a safe location. Of course, my husband backs up all our computers (we have 8 at the moment) on the 2TB external hard drive, but I would really like to know why no one mentions the flash drives. Is there something inherently wrong with them that would make them a poor choice?

Why not use flash drives? Well, it depends on what you have to back up. For instance, my master ebook library is in c:\eBooks. That directory tree is currently at 19GB. I don't have any flash drives big enough to handle that.

Backing up to the web presents similar challenges. I currently have not quite a terabyte of storage, spread across half a dozen physical drives in my desktop. I could make incremental backups to the web (IE: stuff that has changed since last backup), but getting the initial backup on the cloud would be time consuming...

@ DGma ~ The same thing happened to me with one of my first laptops. We were able to retrieve most of the data off of the damaged hard drive, but I lost one of the best recipes for pound cake that I've ever made. It was given to me by a woman who had experimented with the recipe for years before she got it "just right". I still moan about that loss every time I start to make a pound cake.

My SO stilll uses an old MS-DOS program called Meal Master. It was written by a programmer whose wife wanted a recipe database. IT worked well enough to become quite popular, and current Windows based products mostly still have an option to import recipes in the transfer format Meal Master used. I'll have to see what we might have in pound cake recipes.
______
Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Pet peeve of today: anti virus programs producing false positives.

I use Symantec Corporate A/V. It installed with no problems and just runs, and has never caused a problem with anything else. (The same cannot be said for Symantec's consumer oriented Norton A/V program.) Virus signatures are updated automatically over the Internet each Friday.

The last update made Symantec decide a program called cmdkey.exe was infected. Cmdkey.exe is a free, open source, 32 bit Win NT/2K/XP port of an old PC Magazine called CmdEdit. CmdEdit added command line recall and editing, aliases, and other features to COMMAND.COM. It was one of a number of programs like that, designed to fill a hole in DOS.

CMD.EXE in Windows finally added command line recall and editing, but as typical with Microsoft, the implementation was inferior to third party efforts. Because Cmdkey is based on CmdEdit, it can use the same configuration file, which is handy because I do have some old DOS software still in use an occasionally need to run a COMMAND.COM instance where I load CmdEdit.

Cmdkey.exe is run automatically by an autorun.cmd file defined in the registry as something to be executed whenever CMD.EXE is run. Symantec decided Cmdkey was infected with a virus, and deleted it. This means CMD.EXE would not run because the file wasn't there and the script aborted.

Cue grumbling while I go in and tell Symantec not to check certain directories, then extract a fresh copy of the program from the distribution archive and drop it into the right place...

Next step is an email to the maintainer of the program giving him a heads up about the issue.

I really had nothing better to do than chase down that problem. Right.
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Dennis