The last minute MMP

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
241

Good morning. Maggie Wonderbeagle is going to the vet this morning. It’s time for her annual checkup and quarterly ear infection. I am doing some cleaning before hockey tonight.

MamaTigs, palebunny, I lost power for 5 days during the ice storm of 2002. That’s when I found out the cat likes to set herself on fire. :eek: Surprisingly, singed cat hair doesn’t smell anything like Chinese food.

Good luck to swampy!!! Remember 1. Don’t eat the interviewer, 2. Don’t ask if the job involves wwwwiiiiirrrrreeee hhhhhaaaaaannnnngggggeeeeerrrrssss!

rigby say, books A Otay!

bobbio, if I get another cat, I am naming it Thorax.

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The other cat (a calico Maine Coon) I refer to as Audrey The Pile Of Hair.

The now departed kittens at the end of their stay had morphed into Piss and Vinegar. (they are in a happy home, for those who worry)

Although cliched, I think the next cat will be dubbed Bill.

243

I. Hate. Stats.

That is all.

244

It’s gonna be a crazy day - everyone wants to ‘meet’ with me, talk to me or expects something from me.

Today’s the first of the funerals of the four kids that died in that car accident here over the weekend. I had 8 people ask for the morning, or mid day off to go, and had to deny all but one - only her because she was the girls godmother. I felt crappy doing it, because that has hot this town so hard - it’s literally like a veil of grief here - but I simply cannot spare that many people. Tomorrow is another funeral, then the last two are being waked Friday, and buried Saturday - FROM THE SAME FUNERAL HOME.

Off to be an ogre some more…

245

taters, you have my sympathy. That truly sucks.

rigs, ignore the nosy old hag. And as for arrested teen, maybe she was one of those gypsy magazine scam kids.

swampy, sending good interview vibes.

qd, young beautiful engaged ladies should wear lovely silky undies. There will be time enough later for granny pants. Besides what if you get in an accident and have to go to the ER??? :eek:

Apparently I have received a field promotion. My department head and the most senior Sr. V.P. are in Honduras. In their absence, the CEO has requested that I handle two different projects that are way above the scope of my job description. I am flattered. Nonetheless, I am quite adept at channeling to more appropriate personnel in the department. I also don’t want to get my butt handed to me if either project goes FUBAR.

It’s getting cold here. I am not happy.

Tupug

246

The interview went ok. Honestly, the job does not thrill me all that much. We shall see. I did not eat the interviewer. First off, the interviewer is a she and we all know I don’t work that way. Second, even if the interviewer is cute, one does not eat ones interviewer until at least the second interview. Were you people just not taught any manners? :stuck_out_tongue:

Puggy should we be congratulating you? I’m askin’ cause, well, I ain’t sure if you’re thrilled or what. It’s dang cold here!

Ok, Ima go look at some job stuff, make myself a sammich so I don’t get all rumbly during the funeral (friend’s mother’s funeral is this afternoon, in case I forgot to mention it) and go funeralize.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning first thing, so Ima spend the night in town tonight so I may or may not post until tomorrow. Try not to miss me. Do your homework. No wild parties. Don’t open the door to strangers. And don’t put that in your mouth! You don’t know where it’s been!

247

Good morning everyone and a belated Happy Birthday to Mr. Lisslar. Also, belated Valentines wishes to all.

Yeah, yesterday truly sucked. I’ve had time to absorb some of it, but I still have a bad attitude about it. I’ve been around long enough to know how this sort of thing works out, and who gets the short end of the stick in the deal. That’s me, by the way. My husband tried telling me that maybe it won’t be as bad as I think, but I really do know what I’m getting into here.

Will I learn some new skillsets down there? Probably, and that’s a good thing. But that really is the only good thing about it.

I’ll still belong to this department, but you know, I won’t be part of the department anymore.

Bleah…

Nothing else much going on. Hubby and I stayed home last night. We wanted to watch the “season opener” of Jericho, but turned it off in disgust when we saw it was a recap of last fall’s shows. We ended up watching Talledega Nights. It was good for a chuckle or two.

The night before, we went and saw Messengers . I didn’t find it scary, and figured it out as soon as the unbidden, “help” showed up. It was alright, but I think it’s more rental material and not $10.00 a pop material.

**Swampy, ** good luck with tomorrow’s interview.

248

What Puggy said. On the syllabus next week in my EMT class is where they teach us to check your knickers for holes and skidmarks.

249

I’m all a-grr today. Well, not so much now, but I was last night.

You see, last night, wishes to the contrary, I was forced into the role of playing **House **[sub]C.D.[/sub][sup]*[/sup].

::roll intro collage of starring roles intermeshed with crossfades of computer hardware and CGI simulations of system functions::

It was 11:30pm. I had just finished my nightly before-bed rituals when something popped into my head that I wanted to quickly look up on the computer, so I turn the monitor on. (My computer is rarely turned completely off) Staring back at me was a loverly Bluescreen o’ Death. A rare occurrence, and doubly so when it happened while the computer was sitting doing sod all. Curiouser was that nv4_disp (the nVidia display driver) was supposedly the culprit. Still, crap happens sometimes and a reboot generally clears it up.

O fate, thou art a cruel mistress. The reboot produced another BSOD, this time DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL claimed responsibility. I’ve seen this one a few times. Fine. One BSOD is a shit-happens moment. Two is quite curious. Let’s try again.

Bang! BSOD. PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA was now claiming to be the system terrorist. Three … three is a problem. But I’m stubborn, so I reboot again, this time morbidly curious as to what kind of BSOD will happen next.

Turns out no one claimed responsibility for the next one. It was just a general “I dunno, but screw you anyway” BSOD. Reboot #5.

It actually loads the login screen background this time, and a brief flicker of hope sparks and then dies as an error box pops up stating that winlogon.exe has caused a page fault. The symptoms were obviously dire. It was time to try and fix the patient.

Reboot. F8, Safe Mode. Login screen; account names are garbled, like they’re written in Wingdings, but the system has seized. Ah! A new symptom has presented. Reboot. Attempt a Last Known Good Configuration. No dice; bluescreen and our friend DRIVER_IRQL again. Reboot. Safe Mode with Command Prompt. Garbled alert pops up. I shoo it away by clicking the incomprehensible button. Another alert, portions of which are in Enclish and state that the registry error has been repaired from a backup. Promising. DOS window pops up. Ah-HA! Access to the patient! Check directories. No garbage entries; directory structure appears intact. Run chkdsk. A slew of errors from bad table entries to lost clusters reported but none repaired because the safe mode command prompt is in read-only mode. Damn. However, the registry claimed to be fixed from a backup, so maybe another reboot was in order. So I try – without success. Another page fault in nonpaged area.

Temporarily defeated but undaunted, I grabbed my cane, popped a couple of Vicodin and limped over to the whiteboard to think. A slew of symptoms, and they kept changing seemingly at random. Something has become corrupted, some critical component that’s inducing some kind of digital psychosis, but I’m unable to get at the system to do a proper biopsy of the Windows core. This is going to need some heavy artillery: Winternals ERD Commander, a bootable, self-contained Windows-style environment (built partially from Windows itself) from within which a battery of tests and solutions can be effected. It’s like an MRI, CT, and entire battery of lab tests as and a treatment regimen all rolled into one. I boot into it. It bluescreens the first time, reboots at will the second time, but finally makes it through the boot phase the third. It was rather curious, but I didn’t think much of it, instead concentrating on a diagnosis. Sadly, Winternals couldn’t even find a Windows installation, and without mounting one, Winternals is of limited use. I performed what tests I could but they all came back negative. This was a toughie. The whiteboard was getting crowded.

But when in doubt, dose it with everything you’ve got: A Windows XP Repair Install. It’s like re-installing Windows without having to re-install all your stuff. That’s a surefire way to clean out corrupted crap and replace it with fresh, original copies off the CD. But even there I was blocked; it bluescreened out before it even got to the interactive part of the installation process. It simply refused to go. And that meant that even if it came to a last resort – complete reinstall – I couldn’t even do that much.

Okay. Let’s try normal safe mode again, maybe it’ll work this time. It does! I get in, and start off with the system file checker. Unfortunately, SFC won’t run because the service it relies on doesn’t get loaded in safe mode. Fine, I then run a scandisk. Scandisk needs exclusive access to the system so it can’t be run “live.” Instead it schedules itself for the next reboot, which I promptly do. The corruption somehow has prevented the system from reactivating the video driver before it launches into the disk checker, but I know it’s going on by the drive activity. I let it run its course – but of course it’s all to no avail. Nothing is fixed.

Damn. I was at an impasse. I couldn’t work it out. So I reached out for help from the advanced gurus on a local computer message board, entering a long-winded post from my PDA over my wireless connection – the only computer I had left that still worked and could connect to my network. Typing a long post with an stylus and an on-screen keyboard is a painful process, let me tell you.

I hit “submit.” And I waited. And I thought, idly bouncing the rubber foot of my cane on the floor. Many symptoms, happening frequently at the same points, but the errors themselves seeming to be random. Bluescreens occurring, even in a safe mode command prompt, even when the system is sitting idle. Unfixable errors, no detected Windows installation from Winternals, crashing even when loading purely from CD, not even touching the seemingly corrupted Windows install. It seemed like a corrupted system, but then again the behaviour was too unpredictable, too random to simply be confined to Windows. There had to be something else, something outside of Windows, outside of the data on the hard drive. Something caused that corruption. Something wrote corrupted information on the hard drive.

And that’s when the Moment of Epiphany happened, like it always does three quarters of the way through the episode. Random errors. Unpredictable behaviour, even outside of the Windows environment, even just loading something off the CD. It wasn’t Windows, or not just Windows. There was another symptom, one I didn’t see. The Windows symptoms were masking the real problem.

I pulled out the tower, removed the side panel, cut power to the system and removed one of the RAM sticks, then restored power and booted. No bluescreen, just a spontaneous and rather quick reboot. Let it try again. Spontaneous reboot, same place. I removed the remaining stick and replaced it with the first one I removed.

And the patient was revived. Brain activity normal. System stabilized. Corruption remained, but that would just take some time to clear up. It was one of the RAM sticks all along. Data must have read into it, corrupted then paged out to the system causing data corruption and loss which couldn’t be repaired while the bad RAM was in the system because it could no longer retain data reliably.

I will have to do a system repair install this evening after work – among other things that I can’t read yet (one of the system fonts has been turned into garbage) my system has lost all but TWO of its system fonts (which means the other 2,100+ fonts on my system are corrupted), so I’m going to have to repair-install to recover the original system fonts and any other system files that may have become corrupted, and then set about fixing the rest of whatever else got buggered in this debacle. But now my system only has 1GB of memory, and I’m going to have to either find an exact match to the stick that’s buggered (they’re paired for dual channel DDR) or I’m going to have to buy a completely new matched set. However, the problem has been solved so now it’s a matter of cleaning things up.

It appears I am going to have to RMA both of my sticks (so they can return a new matched set to me) which means I’m going to have to buy a temporary pair of crap sticks in the interim. I’m told Corsair are pretty good with the RMA process though. Still, that’s going to be $240 or so I’m going to be out while it’s being RMAed. That’s the grr part. (Well, the corruption is also grr, but that just costs me time and energy. Also, not getting to bet 'til 2:30am was also kinda grr, with a bit of yawn and a stink-eye at my alarm clock)

I’m just glad I didn’t have to type this on my PDA.

::fade out::

::roll credits::

[sub]* Computer Doctor[/sub]

250

Nah, it was all meant tongue in cheek. “Field Promotion” is what Mr. Anachi said when I was relating the situation to him last night. IOW, it ain’t a real promotion. :smiley:

251

I’ve never taken a Stats class, but I’m pretty sure I’d hate it. I swear, half the reason I became an English major was so I wouldn’t have to deal with numbers anymore.

We have our community college reception today, where we (the students in my “Teaching in the Community College” class) get to mingle with the recruiters from local community colleges. Wish me luck, and pray I don’t get drunk and end up eating one of the cuter recruiters. :stuck_out_tongue:

Mindfield, that sounds… frustrating. But, you know, House is hawt.

Hugs to all who need 'em!

252

Mindfield … bravo. Bravo, sir. You have my respect and admiration.

But Hank, numbers are your friends! You just have to watch out for the ones with sharp edges. Like 7, or 1. And especially the pointed 4. Two and three are okay - nice soft curves.

So apparently there’s some kerfluffle as to who is teaching one of the graduate courses next term. It happens to be a course that I’m interested in taking, so I’m understandably curious. In one corner is the professor of one of my current courses - Professor A, and in the other is a professor that every other graduate student has strongly warned me away from - Professor B. The evidence that Professor B is a horrible teacher is staggering. So much so, that if he is teaching the course, I will take something else. Professor A, until today, was certain that he was teaching it, since quite some time ago. The evidence on the other side:

-Professor B has received a textbook order form. Professor A has not.
-The department chair told the chief admin. assistant that Prof B is teaching it.
-The online registration system lists Prof B as the teacher.

And yet, Professor A knew of none of this until today. Which means that someone screwed up or omitted something somewhere along the line. This kerfluffle is definitely the result of some shenanigans and possibly - though I don’t want to go overboard here - some tomfoolery. I’ll let you all know what happens as it happens.

253

**Mindfield ** - that sounds even worse than the time I was chasing random BSODs on a laptop. Turned out the drive had a Roach Motel section - data checks in but it doesn’t check out - in the pagefile. (where else?!) It also griped about the modem. Who needs a modem? So I crack the case with the intent of removing the modem as it’s apparently gone bad and it’s also just not needed. Hmm…What modem? Just an empty hole there. Apparently it was throwing faults because the modem was missing. Some rummaging in Device Manager was needed to convince the PC that it did not have a modem, and kindly stop trying to talk to one.

The big mystery is who took the modem, and why?

Lotta laffs at DH’s building yesterday. They had a power failure, and some people got stuck in the elevator. The fire department had to do serious damage to the elevator doors to get the people out, so now they’re down one elevator until the doors can be replaced.

Looks like the elevator modernizing phase of the building renovation just got kicked to the top of the priority list and schedule.

Crazy radio - what’s playing now but Aerosmith’s Love in an Elevator?

Lock up Goldilocks - it’s “International Bear Rendezvous” this weekend. The city will be crawling with big furry guys. We won’t be going though - we’re cat-sitting for one of the organizers, dog-sitting for out of state friends that are going, and aside from that, just plain too poor. :frowning:

254

International Bear Rendezvous? That sounds like Swampy’s kinda critters! :smiley:

I am feeling more than a little wrung out this morning, but WARM. Which is really all I care about. It is so nice just to sit here and not have to be wearing 16 layers to keep WARM. WARM is good.

I’ve been through longer power outages, but never one with no water. And no way to cook – Papa Tigs had bought a can of gas for the small portable grill, but it simply refused to connect, and we didn’t want to blow the house up trying. We have an electric stove, which I really hate at times like this. And no water is a serious pain in the tuchus. We went through a 4-1/2 day power outage back in the Great Ice Storm of '99, but then we had water, plus I was working in an office so could go there and even take a shower since they had a small gym with a shower in the office. I was ready to go to the gym here to shower this morning if we didn’t have power yet, but fortunately that’s no longer a problem.

But we’re all kinda wrung out, for some strange reason. I guess being that cold for that long will do it to you. Plus I was somewhat sick on top of it – I’m not sure what was going on, but that headache I was complaining about was only the start of two days of feeling awful. And this morning the doctor called and said that apparently I have some bacteria floating around in my urine, even though I don’t have any symptoms, so now I have to take Cipro for five days. My first though, natch? I have anthrax?

:smiley: :smiley:

You guys who chase your random BSODs amaze me. When I get one that doesn’t resolve with a reboot, I call in my in-house expert and let him worry about it. He would probably understand what you were talking about. Me? I got no clue.

Now I need to go back and read what happened to Taters.

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Myndy - Hail to thee, oh geekmaster. You see, being a Mac user, I have never encountered the BSOD. And if, Og forbid, it happens at work, the Company Geeks come right over and fix or replace the unit (I once had the purple and turquoise screen of confusion when my monitor was dying, but that’s a whole other issue). The trick is, once you’ve fixed it and the credits roll, and the director yells cut, do you then have a British Accent?

Don’t tell Stephen Colbert!

I’m feeling better, but not great. I stayed home today also. and since there’s very little point to going in tomorrow I’ll play that one by ear

I got my cable channels back - it was an easy reboot of the box.

Off to feed on some tuna salad or maybe soup. Yeah. It’s a soup sort of day.

256

Yes they can.
I hate people.

257

There are people who will gossip so they can judge and feel superior - but those people have no lives of their own, or have very messed up lives and spend their time searching for other people who are more messed up (or so they think) so they can live with themselves

But every gossips to some degree, even if they don’t realize it.

258

This part of your interesting story intrigues me. Where do I get one of these? When I go to shut down my rig at home, it never finishes the process by itself. This happened after installing an upgrade about 9 months ago. Do you think this would help? I’m not adverse to reinstalling everything, but if I don’t have to I don’t want to.

259

Okay, I’ve gone back and caught up on the thread. (So much for doing what I should be doing.) Taters, that truly sucks. You have my sympathy. Papa Tigs is in kind of a similar situation – he’s got two colonels who absolutely hate each others’ guts, each claiming him for their organization, and putting him in the middle every chance they can. The only saving grace is that he’s a long-time expert on the Care and Feeding of Tame Colonels, so thus far he’s managing to keep everyone happy whilst staying out of the line of fire.

But it’s an awkward position for anyone to be in, having multiple bosses. And it doesn’t help that you were blindsided being told about it. :frowning: Hang in there, it’ll get better!

I got my ice storm photos uploaded. Here’s a few for your entertainment:

View out the back door

Even the biggest trees were coated

The bushes were really weighed down!

I loved the ice on this little tree in our front yard

Mother Nature can really paint with ice, can’t she?

Okay. I really need to do some work now. Or go to the drugstore and pick up my anthrax meds. Or something.

260

I don’t see them much any more either. At home, we’re all Mac, and at work, our PCs are pretty carefully tended by unseen hands via the magic of something called SMS. Nine times out of ten, if a user’s PC blue-screens, it’s because they were messing with it.

Speaking of rebooting cable boxes, I had to do the same thing two days ago. The guide came up OK, but when you’d select a channel, you’d either get a black screen, or a severely garbled image that looked like it might have been a man in a hospital gown holding a phone. There were so many shifted or oddly-colored segments that we just couldn’t be sure. A hard reboot fixed it, at least.

I’m not sure I like living in a world where basic appliances like cable boxes and ovens need to be rebooted.

At least my fingerprints will be among the bears this weekend. Our tenant is one of the event organizers, and he had some paint cans that needed holes cut in their lids to use as tip/donation collection cans. Fortunately for him, I have a Dremel and know how to use it. :smiley: