f-log

OK just a quick note, during the Ghost restore process the references to Feb 2006 seemed to match the 2007 dates the machine had gone down.
But in fact the restore point was Feb 2006, no idea why, loads of space left on the drive, good thing I had backed all the C: files I could to an external hard disk first.

I have been busy with Alex and job hunting, but I did try fixing my father in-laws windows XP machine.
First off it would only boot one in five tries, usually hanging at the POST. the Knoppix live CD gave me the memtest86 option so I ran it for a few hours and one of the DIMMs was faulty, so I replaced it.
Machine still had POST hanging problems but they were more consistent, in the end I shorted the CMOS and everything seemed much better, but windows hung on starting, even safe mode hung when selecting the user. But Admin in safe mode worked, tried defrag and it said to run scan disk, scan disk said to restart with the windows CD and run scandisk. Scandisk hung, so I downloaded a live CD with Maxtor's/Seagate's hard drive checker.
The initial screen told me the hard drive had exceeded its heat tolerance at 236 degrees, which is odd cos the other hard drive in the machine said its max temperature was 40 degrees.
The test rand for a while and told me there were 99 errors so I backed up everything from the drive using Knoppix live CD and a USB external hard drive. All went well until I tried to copy the 50gb backup file off the second hard drive.
After 3 days I canceled the copy, it appears that the USB hard drive was NTFS and the source drive was NTFS and large files are not a good way to go with NTFS-3g which is odd cos it had copied a total of 50gb in individual files no problem off the NTFS bad drive to the same USB drive.
Still I bought a new hard drive 350gb for£50 from PC World (very good price for SATA) and whacked it in, now I thought the fun was to begin.
But my father inlaw had Norton Ghost 10 installed so I tried the recovery live CD.
It took along time to boot but after a while it had a basic version of windows running (or it looked like it did) and I just choose find restore points/restore and after about an hour (I had it do a system check) I rebooted and everything was as it was before the original problems, very impressive.

I made it to the LUG last night even though I was not feeling 100%. I wanted to go because I was doing a small presentation on Blender the 3d modeling system.
Sometimes we have a projector to help with demos but none was available this week so I took an old 19" monitor but it turns out the laptop I took can only use either the monitor or the LCD not both, but strangely windows was able to show a 800x600 image on the monitor and 1024x768 on the LCD, the monitor then scrolled when I moved the mouse. Maybe I could have configured Xorg, I always thought these laptops did the second monitor in hardware.
I was trying to run Blender in Knoppix 5.1.1 but it was flaky and I ended up using Blender in windows, I think it was because I was running the live CD and then running Blender directly off a USB memory stick.
The demo went well, but the result did not look quite right and I forgot to take the "here is one I created earlier" image, so here is to original "apple storm".
I must have done something right though, I got a free drink and have been invited to do a follow up on Blender animation.
The finale of the evening was a screening of Elephants dream which is impressive but confusing.

When I used to use Debian many years ago, local mail just worked. Any system emails were available by running mutt as the root user.
With Gentoo I get the file dead.letter on both the local user and roots home folders.
Turns out Gentoo does not have any mail stuff installed by default, but a quick emerge of postfix and some config file tampering and now all my system mail can be read in KMail by my local user !
http://gentoo-wiki.com/TIP_Postfix_Setup_for_Local_Mail_Only
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=542393

Don't you just love the Easter Holidays ?
Relaxing, watching a DVD, the uncontrolled shivering followed by the inability to breathe.
Well I had had a annoying stomach bug for less than 24 hours what did I expect ?
Not to be carted down the stairs in a dressing gown by paramedics and put on oxygen on the back of an ambulance and rushed (I am proud to say lights and sirens were used) to hospital.
Although I remained conscious all this time I had my eyes closed and my brain seemed to be far away.
I have only a few fleeting memories but it all went down something like this...
Monday-lunch, a nice chicken pasta salad from Marks&Spencers.
18:00 I am on the train home, slight travel sickness, nothing to be concerned about.
19:30 Neighbors come for roast dinner, before it starts I barf up the chicken pasta and feel pretty good.
Tuesday morning, I am sick, nothing out of the ordinary, but I need the day off work and I do not feel like doing much of anything, least of all eat.
But under strict instructions try and drink as much water as possible.
14:00 Wrapped up in bed watching "Steam Boy" Anime DVD (review soon).
15:00 Start to feel cold, worse than normal feverish cold.
15:30 I am shivering uncontrollably, moaning and Sarah is so worried she calls the on-call Doctor.
Before the Doctor gets to the house I start throwing up in an unpleasant manor and 999 is called.
Doctor arrives and after finding my blood pressure low and dropping, contacts the ambulance and asks them to hurry up.
Ambulance crew get me into a wheel chair and carry me downstairs, load me into an ambulance and start me on oxygen.
Not sure what happens but in the next 8 hours I will be x-rayed twice and transfered twice, where was my brain ?
At some point a drip is put in and then continuously replaced for the next 56 hours.
The next day Wednesday is another blur, but I work out I have 12 needle holes in me, from different tests and failed vein sightings.
Apparently when you are as dehydrated as me, all your veins hide.
The drip fails and must be resighted to the other arm, woohoo :(
Thursday and I can start to enjoy the stigma of being branded infectious, private side room, own TV, but sleep through most of it.
I convince the medical staff to remove the drip by drinking and eating everything given to me, but they leave in the cannular (the bit embedded in my arm).
Friday, am finally awake and looking around, tired but alive, still not well enough to be bored.
The ECG sticky pads from A&E are starting to eat my skin, turns out they should have been removed days ago.
Saturday, start to get bored (a sign I am getting better).
Sunday, go home !
Monday, write this.