December 2004 Archive

Welcome to the Archive for December 2004! What you will find here may be old. It may scare you. It may even scare me! More importantly, you might find links that no longer work, and *gasp* information that is no longer, or possibly never was, accurate in any way. Don't rely on this information to save your life!

December 2004 Archive

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

[Comments: 1] 4:09 AM - click-of-death

People constantly bring up the notion that when something doesn't work, it simply means you need to give it a good whack. If it still doesn't work, hit it harder. If it doesn't work by the time it breaks, it was time you got a new one anyway. This is a bit of a variation on, "If it doesn't fit, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway."

The amazing thing is that this actually works far more often than one would expect. Over the past few weeks I've "fixed" two separate hard drives through the very simple art of dropping them. One of the drives failed at work, and the other failed in my sister's computer.

The symptom is easily recognizable: the drive makes a clicking noise repeatedly and the computer has trouble identifying the device at startup. This sound is often an indication of a stuck drive head.

The solution is unbelievable: hold the drive about 6 inches above a solid surface, such as a table or hard floor. Drop the drive once and then reinstall it. This procedure tends to free the drive head or other stuck components. As long as the head is not stuck in a position over the platters, this procedure can't do much harm. However, when you think about it, the drop can't make a dead hard drive any worse than dead, so there's really nothing to lose by physically abusing the hardware.

Both drives I dropped have recovered and given no less than the opportunity to back up data. In the former case, the drive was replaced by Dell, but in the latter, we opted to see how well the system runs since the drive has begun to behave properly again. I arranged for an extra hard drive to be connected with a fancy backup batch script so my sister can keep a spare copy of her data just in case the click of death returns and decides to take up a more permanent residence.

The drive problems on my sister's computer were the culmination of a recent string of frequent total lockups of Windows XP. Since the "repair" the machine has yet to lock up again. It's only been a few hours though, so I'll have to allow additional time to be absolutely certain. If indeed the problem goes away, we'll be able to safely assume that the hard drive itself was trying to let us know it was ready to die. If only the S.M.A.R.T. system would actually have decided to clue us in as well. Has anyone ever actually seen S.M.A.R.T. work?

Thursday, December 23, 2004

[Comments: 0] 10:15 PM - i-can-see-clearly-now

I recently decided it was time to get myself an LCD monitor and ditch my old massive 19" Sony CRT monitor. The flickering of a 75 Hz refresh rate and the wobbliness of the picture whenever anything eletrical approached it was beginning to grow annoying, and the occasional random glitch that would cause it to flip randomly in and out of focus wasn't too much fun either.

So I selected for myself the 19" Sony SDM-HS94P/S. This monitor is a bit larger than what I had planned to get orginally, but my dad found a great deal on this model, bringing the price after rebate to about $560, which I consider a very lucky find.

The place to order was Circuit City, which beyond the nice deal, also got the thing shipped in one day. With free shipping, I fully expected to see the display after Christmas, but I was also pleasantly surprised to find that the UPS Ground from the origination point (Bethlehem, PA) meant that UPS Ground was basically overnight shipping, so two days after order, I'm sitting at my computer with my new monitor.

I love the crispness of the picture, the more vivid color, and the increased viewing area. I would have preferred to get a monitor that could reach a higher resolution but I found none from brands I felt I could trust. This monitor's also really bright, which is a bit disorienting based on what I'm used to. Overall, though, it seems to be a great monitor and a welcome replacement to my CRT.

[Comments: 0] 2:20 AM - shave-less-irritation

I just wanted to follow up on my earlier post about shaving to report that the triple blade razor, used daily rather than on every two to three days has already improved things to a huge degree. I've shaven every day since Saturday, and even in the short course of 5 days, the irritation has already been greatly reduced. I imagine it's still likely to improve further as my face has more time to adjust.

Thanks for the various tips from the various people that offered them. I'll continue to experiment with some of the suggestions people gave me to see what gets the overall best results. Looks like I'll stick with the razor though. :)

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

[Comments: 0] 2:48 AM - pointless-but-fun

It was one of those ideas that made me work tirelessly to get it done, even though it had no quantifiable value to anyone at all. Now, for no really apparent reason, my current Gaim away message is available every day for everyone to see. Since I have an away message almost all of the time, there should always be something to look at, even if you don't have me on your buddy list. Kinda nifty.

Why should you care? You probably shouldn't. My away messages usually don't mean anything and I forget to update them. There's a chance they're silly, funny, or witty, but probably not. Enjoy!

I've also reworked the way the currently playing song appears on the home page, as well as how that translates to the script I use in IRC to display the same information. Please visit my IRC channel. There are half of ten people waiting there most of the time to chat! Go to the sleeping SimPage.net for a Java chat client, or contact me for help! :)

If you're really smart, just figure out how to get yourself on to the Undernet IRC network (us.undernet.org) and join channel #SimGames.

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

[Comments: 0] 1:01 AM - like-a-bird

Ray set up my itinerary so that I can make the initial trip out to Chicago to go see everthing. I'm going to be gone from Friday, January 7th through Sunday, January 9th.

In, what I gather, is the interest of saving money, I have layovers. On the way there, I get a crazy layover in Atlanta, which is really insanely random, but I don't really mind. I enjoy flying, and I can certainly find something to do with the time either way. On the way back, the layover is in Cincinnati, which is more on the way, but since it's a longer layover I'll have some down time. It lines up well with dinner time, so I'll take that opportunity. :)

Both flights are evening flights. I'll head out an hour or so after work on the Friday and then be back late Sunday evening. That'll give me the maximum time to visit Chicago and see what's going on.

I'm still extremely excited. It'll be sad to have to break the news to the school district folks, because they're great people, but I think most of them were expecting that this arrangement was temporary. I'm sure they'll survive without me just fine. :)

Sunday, December 19, 2004

[Comments: 3] 3:00 PM - css-two-is-neato

I just added some code to make the little comments form (and other form fields [there are none]) around the site more colorful, and I applied CSS attribute selectors and psuedo-classes to the fields. They look really cool in Mozilla, slightly less cool in Opera, and they don't work at all in Internet Explorer. You don't need a link for that one.

The attribute selectors work like this:

input[type="submit"]:active, input[type="reset"]:active

This actually selects only input fields that are submit buttons or reset buttons and applies the style to them. The selector also chooses only those buttons that are active (meaning at the point when you click on them) using the pseudo-class "active."

I also used a technique that configured all input fields to change border colors when they're focused using the "focus" pseudo-class, effectively highlighting which field you're typing in. I love CSS. :)

[Comments: 1] 1:21 PM - future-in-the-windy-city

It looks like it's finally about to happen. Karl is ready to make the offer to hire me full-time out in Chicago at Steadfast Networks. Looks like we're going to try to organize things so that I get to take a trip out there in early January to see how everything's set up and actually get to meet Karl and Ray for the first time ever. I've talked to Karl on the phone (though that was a couple years ago), but I've never seen either of them face to face.

After I get to see the place, it appears that we'll formalize my job around the end of January, with hopes that I can actually make the move out there sometime early in the month of February. This will come with medical insurance and a salary increase from what I'm making now at Harborfields, and this is much more along the lines of what I've wanted to do in pursuit of a career. I'm still holding out hope that someday I can be a web developer for a gaming company, but I love the work of being an administrator for a hosting company just about as much.

I'm really excited about finally getting this opportunity. It's way different than going off to college though. This is the real deal—permanent and life-changing. I have to admit I'm a little apprehensive. I'll be going to a town where I know no one other than the people I'm going there to work with. I'm going to have to rely on myself to keep my bills paid and generally manage my life. My parents will be there, back on Long Island, if I need help, but this is the point where my depending on them directly ends. I know it will work. I'll be fine on my own on a permanent basis, but it's going to be a big change from what I've known thus far.

I keep thinking about all the things I'll have to take care of in order to move to Illinois. I'll have to change billing addresses, get my magazine subscription changed, find new doctors, a bank, eventually reregister my car, reregister to vote. It's a pain to move permamently, isn't it? I've never done it before. Let's call it a learning experience, I guess. I'm sure I'll get to do it again. Someday I'll probably want a house or something, or maybe I'll find myself in another city.

I've still got more than a month till this all goes down, more than likely, so it'll get some time to settle into my head before I have to actually take any major action. Hopefully that'll give me the chance to calm myself down a little. :)