Today I'm thankful for ...
... Apple's Time Machine. Oh heck yes.
Yesterday my Parallels installation of Vista bit it hard. And I mean hard. Its virtual hard drive was so corrupt that chkdsk was trying to recover system files. I blame me dropping my laptop last week, but who knows. Anyways, so I've been using Time Machine quite regularly and so I had a backup of the Vista installation. I opened up the archive, scrolled back to July 20, and there it was: the old versions of the virtual machine. So I just copied them back and Vista is back working again. YAY!
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
26 July 2008
09 March 2008
It won't ... it DID!
Today I'm thankful for ...
... having a hatchback and an Internet connection. So, yay, I got to take home a new TV. Unfortunately, TVs are getting a bit larger these days even though they are technically getting smaller. It's all that packaging...
I went online a few days ago and found a TV on sale and thought ... oh cool! The next thought was: delivery or pick-up? Well, I read Sony's website and copied out the dimensions of the packaging. I went back to my car and ... holy ... the box would fit exactly. I mean exactly. With millimeters (if at all) to spare. In fact, when I went to the store to get the TV the guys looked at me as if I was insane.
"If the Internet measurements are correct then there won't be a problem."
"There's no way this is fitting in there."
"Just try it. I can always get it delivered."
They tipped it into the back and ... "oh my ..." ... it slid in perfectly with a couple of millimeters to spare on both sides. Then the tailgate wouldn't close, but I was sure it was capable of closing. I went through my checklist: seats forward all the way, no obstructions, won't close... OH. And then I noticed the seats were reclined. (My car has locking seatbacks to "remember" the recline position.) So I straightened the seatbacks and ... voila. The box actually had a couple of inches to spare! So after shutting the lid I even got to recline my seat a bit.
... having a hatchback and an Internet connection. So, yay, I got to take home a new TV. Unfortunately, TVs are getting a bit larger these days even though they are technically getting smaller. It's all that packaging...
I went online a few days ago and found a TV on sale and thought ... oh cool! The next thought was: delivery or pick-up? Well, I read Sony's website and copied out the dimensions of the packaging. I went back to my car and ... holy ... the box would fit exactly. I mean exactly. With millimeters (if at all) to spare. In fact, when I went to the store to get the TV the guys looked at me as if I was insane.
"If the Internet measurements are correct then there won't be a problem."
"There's no way this is fitting in there."
"Just try it. I can always get it delivered."
They tipped it into the back and ... "oh my ..." ... it slid in perfectly with a couple of millimeters to spare on both sides. Then the tailgate wouldn't close, but I was sure it was capable of closing. I went through my checklist: seats forward all the way, no obstructions, won't close... OH. And then I noticed the seats were reclined. (My car has locking seatbacks to "remember" the recline position.) So I straightened the seatbacks and ... voila. The box actually had a couple of inches to spare! So after shutting the lid I even got to recline my seat a bit.
13 February 2008
Geek is chic?
Today I'm thankful for ...
... Dad introducing me to computers, and that I stuck with them. Lately this stupid Macbook Pro has been giving me tons of problems. It couldn't see its firewire port and it wasn't able to sleep. I tried resetting the NVRAM and PRAM according to many guides on the Internet. I took it to the Apple store and they said I might incur a $300 repair and would be out of a computer for weeks.
That is just not going to work for me.
I use my personal laptop also as my work computer. I have many professional licenses on this machine and I can't easily transfer them off. I have insurmountable deadlines too.
So my solution was to figure out if it's a software issue or a hardware issue. My guess is that it's both: Parallels taking over my firewire port and not letting a process sleep; and an aging hard disk that probably is littered with errors from being bumped while it was writing. I got a new 160GB hard disk (40GB more than what I currently have) and after reading many guides I decided to crack open the Macbook case...
Wow, talk about a bazillion screws. Seriously. I had a strip of tape where I could tack the screws so I could remember what order to put them back in. There's probably 2 dozen mini Phillips and Torx-6 screws! But I did it, ever so gingerly moving ribbon cables and unlocking this and that. With the new HDD connected and a fresh Mac OS X install the computer functioned as good as new, sleeping and all. Now I knew that it was most likely a software problem.
What's more interesting is that I swapped the drives back to my old 120GB and now the computer sleeps just fine too!!! I don't get it! My best guess is that jostling the laptop around loosened something and one day when I slept the computer while my Mighty Mouse was on probably put it into a weird power state. By taking out the RAM and swapping the hard drive I think that helped to reset any stuck bits, and the fresh Mac OS X install helped cleanse the rest of it.
Anyways, I'm glad that my introduction to technology happened when I was young and I was never discouraged from pursuing it. There are many girls who get frustrated by being too geeky, but sometimes you just have to follow your passion I guess?
... Dad introducing me to computers, and that I stuck with them. Lately this stupid Macbook Pro has been giving me tons of problems. It couldn't see its firewire port and it wasn't able to sleep. I tried resetting the NVRAM and PRAM according to many guides on the Internet. I took it to the Apple store and they said I might incur a $300 repair and would be out of a computer for weeks.
That is just not going to work for me.
I use my personal laptop also as my work computer. I have many professional licenses on this machine and I can't easily transfer them off. I have insurmountable deadlines too.
So my solution was to figure out if it's a software issue or a hardware issue. My guess is that it's both: Parallels taking over my firewire port and not letting a process sleep; and an aging hard disk that probably is littered with errors from being bumped while it was writing. I got a new 160GB hard disk (40GB more than what I currently have) and after reading many guides I decided to crack open the Macbook case...
Wow, talk about a bazillion screws. Seriously. I had a strip of tape where I could tack the screws so I could remember what order to put them back in. There's probably 2 dozen mini Phillips and Torx-6 screws! But I did it, ever so gingerly moving ribbon cables and unlocking this and that. With the new HDD connected and a fresh Mac OS X install the computer functioned as good as new, sleeping and all. Now I knew that it was most likely a software problem.
What's more interesting is that I swapped the drives back to my old 120GB and now the computer sleeps just fine too!!! I don't get it! My best guess is that jostling the laptop around loosened something and one day when I slept the computer while my Mighty Mouse was on probably put it into a weird power state. By taking out the RAM and swapping the hard drive I think that helped to reset any stuck bits, and the fresh Mac OS X install helped cleanse the rest of it.
Anyways, I'm glad that my introduction to technology happened when I was young and I was never discouraged from pursuing it. There are many girls who get frustrated by being too geeky, but sometimes you just have to follow your passion I guess?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
