ReCharged

On Monday I went under the knife.  I had the battery in my VNS device replaced.  This device is very important, as it’s the only treatment that has ever kept me seizure free.

The original plan was to replace my existing model 102 with the newer and smaller model 103.  With the main advantages of it being smaller with the same battery life and it having a count down timer.  The count down timer feature is great because it enables my neurologist to plan the right time to schedule replacement surgery.

As it turned out, I received the model 102, not a huge deal.  My surgery went well – it only lasted 30 minutes!  We arrived at the hospital at 9am and were out by 1pm.  After leaving the hospital we immediately went to my neurologist’s office so he could turn my new implant on.

I went back to work today and am feeling okay.  I feel like I over worked my right shoulder with a touch of a burning sensation.  With the help of some pain medication, it’s not that bad.  I do have a lifting restriction for two weeks.  At 5-10 pounds, it eliminates me picking up Amelia.  I want to so bad, but don’t want to tear anything and make my healing progress.

I’ve noticed a sore throat for the last two nights starting about 7 o’clock and lasting through the night.  Rachel said that I had the same complaint when I had my first surgery, but I don’t remember that.

Hopefully I can have 5 more years of seizure free living.

Like a Phoenix

I am slowly but surely rising from the ashes of a dead hard drive.

About a month ago, my brand new 1.5 terabyte Seagate hard drive crashed.  I tried a few tricks to try to recover the data, but none of them worked.  I didn’t want to spend the $700 to $2700 I was quoted for data recovery, as I am a person of simple means.

Luckily I had old data from my old computer stored on 4 separate hard drives.  I used my “old” hard drive dedicated to video work and installed it, and then started transferring data.  Unfortunately my “backup” drive decided to crap out as soon as I got most of the data off of it.  That drive is the only other Seagate I have.  Their reputation isn’t doing so well with me.  I think I’m going to stick with Western Digital from now on.

I now have almost every episode from season one of ROX on my computer and edited.  There are a couple I’m having problems with, but this time around things have been much smoother than before.  It’s a shame because I spent 3 years working on that stuff.  The video is crisper, the audio is clearer – just a better product all around.  I think this disaster was actually a blessing in disguise.

Once I get these “trouble” episode problems resolved, which are:  Family Values Special, A Festival of Fools and Mom, Dad, I’m Getting Married.  I can start on DVD menu authoring which is a tedious process.  The more time I spend on it, the better the end product will be though.  I want this season to be the standard, not the example.

Season One will be made up of two volumes of 4 discs each.  This is mainly due to quality concerns.  In the set will be all 25 episodes!  Also included will be special commentary on episode 31, A Toast to Poverty by the shows’ producers – J and Editor B.  Plus a few surprising extras.  It should be a hit for all!

I finally have a backup plan so this shouldn’t happen again.  With some help I have purchased a backup hard drive for ROX and I will have my server up and going soon.  With those two options, I hope I have enough redundancy for this not to happen again.

I hope to have season one finalized within a few months, so be on the lookout!

7

Microsoft has taken a lot of flack for it’s Vista operating system, due to it’s many issues.  While I didn’t have many, the ones I did have forced me to upgrade to Windows 7.

This is my non-technical review based on my jeers and cheers.

Since I am a staff member at Indiana University, I have access to vast amounts of software for free or very cheap.  This afforded me the opportunity to upgrade for $20.  That’s right.

I’ll start with the things I like about Windows 7…

First of all, my Nikon Coolpix 7600 and it’s accompanying software would not work with Vista, period.  Vista’s own picture transfer wizard would not even work.  I believe it was something to do with the horrible USB support Vista had.  With 7, my 4 year old camera, and it’s software work better than ever!  I can’t wait to see how my bluetooth dongle works!

Second, Vista loved RAM.  It loved it so much, that no matter how much you had it seemed like it wasn’t enough.  This isn’t the case with 7 – it’s more like the opposite.  Windows 7 actually uses half as much RAM at idle on my machine than Vista did.  Freeing up that memory makes the machine much more responsive, programs load instantly.

Third, UAC.  User Access Control, introduced with Vista was a major pain in the a**.  I disabled it, but by doing that I also disabled notification of any problems elsewhere that could have happened.  With 7, you can do the same with a slider without the potential repercussions.  Set it to where you want it right from the task bar.

Fourth, Media Center.  I started using media center with Vista’s version, and I thought it couldn’t get any better.  I was wrong.  7’s media center works better and is more reliable.  It also has CBS TV streaming built right in.  So now you can watch ANYTHING on TV if you have media center and Hulu Desktop.  Add Boxee to the mix and you have the ultimate home entertainment machine.  I also have My Movies3 and Heatwave integrated into WMC, I love it!

Now onto the not so nice things…

There are many compatibility issues with programs and 7.  While they will work, you may have to re-install.  While this isn’t a huge issue, it’s still bothersome.  I can happily report that I’ve only had one casualty of the upgrade, Quickbooks 2008.  I have to restart my computer any time I want to use it.  Intuit knows about this issue and is “working on a solution.”  I hope it is resolved soon, this program wasn’t cheap, even though it’s free now.

I haven’t been a fan of the “new” start menu since it was introduced with Windows XP.  Luckily Microsoft has always provided us with an alternative, the “classic” start menu, which has it’s origins with Windows 95.  It has gone the way of the 8-track.  While there are some registry hacks to get the old menu back, and even a guide on lifehacker, I’m adapting to this change and I’m starting to get on board with it.  Many of us “old timers” don’t like change.

Those are my only complaints thus far.  Which isn’t that bad.  I believe 7 is what Vista was meant to be.

Crash and Freeze?

Over the past couple of weekends I’ve been working hard at getting ROX season one to the production phase.  I’ve authored all the DVD menus and have done most of the design of the case inserts.  I had all the episodes ready.  It was just a matter of rendering all of the discs and making sure I had all of the extras we wanted before it would be finished.

All of that work took an extreme turn for the worse the other day.  I had been having troubles rendering video.  I thought it was a Sony Vegas or Quick Timeissue, so I removed and reinstalled.  I then went on to think it was a codec issue, so I removed every media codec I had (quite a few), still didn’t fix it.  I had given up for the night out of pure frustration as to why my 2 month old computer wasn’t working properly.

The next day I woke to something I’ve never seen before.  A black screen with a message:  Cannot read disk on SATA 0 and Cannot read disc on SATA 3.  WTF!

I restarted the machine to hear a distinct “clicking” noise.  One of the hard drives was toast, so I removed the secondary one (the one with all the important data on it) and the computer would then boot into safe mode.  Apparently, my virus software which I get from Indiana University somehow became corrupt and became “Incompatible with my version of windows.”  So I wiped it and am still installing my programs.

My 1.5tb drive which has all of my personal, business and ROX data was clicking.  What do I do?  I could not initialize the disk.  My first thought was disk recovery, so I called the only computer service place I trust and they referred me to Drive Savers.  They gave me a code that cuts 10% off the price and gives you a no data – no cost guarantee.  I called them up and the estimate was quite shocking, $700 to $2700.  Anybody want a large Seagate drive on the cheap?

Is the data worth that?  It contains 3 years of blood, sweat and tears on this project.  I conferred with my partner in crime, Editor B.  He said he would help, which was a relief.  My homeowners insurance policy will cover anything over $1000.  After much thought and searching my other hard drives for data, I’ve decided to try something a little ‘home brewed’ to alleviate my situation.  Freezing the drive.

Not like this picture though.  The moisture from the ice will ruin it.  I scoured the interwebs looking for “freezer trick hard drive” and came across many posts about how this can help you retrieve the data you need.  Sometimes it works for just a few minutes and sometimes it works for a few hours.  There is no definitive amount of time, I think it’s limited to just how damaged the hard drive is.

I put my hard drive in the freezer last night about 6pm and I plan on taking out about the same time tonight.  I wrapped it with some paper towels and placed it in a vacuum bag.  This will help with any moisture issues that could result.  I plan on keeping the hard drive in the bag and placing it in a larger bag with ice.  When I connect the drive the computer, this will help keep it cooler longer.

I have about 500 gigs of data that I would like to get off of this drive.  But I have prioritized what I am retrieving.

Wish me luck.

UPDATE: This did not work in my circumstance.  However I’ve been told it does.

Backup the Backup

After many years of accidentally deleting or losing data, I have come to a point where that should no longer happen.

When my old machine died, I thought I would turn it into a backup server.  I was unable to make that dream come true as it was too far gone to resurrect.  I was however able to find an adequate machine for $50 that does all I need it to.  I wanted something that would be able to work cross platform as I currently have 2 windows machines and I want to eventually buy a Mac Book.  The only option that seemed to be the right decision was Linux, specifically Ubuntu.

After working on many different options, I found what I believe will be the easiest and best way for my specific situation.  I have samba running on my Ubuntu Intrepid machine with the built-in windows backup client backing up the machines on a weekly basis.  While I haven’t researched it  yet, from what co-workers have told me Apple’s time machine program should work much the same.

This link was the clearest on how to set samba up:  http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=202605

From there it was just like sharing folders or drives in Windows.

Now that my testing is complete, I can add some hard drives and put it in production mode.  My wife is so thrilled that she shouldn’t have to worry about losing data anymore.

Season One

I started working on ROX because of a passion.  This show is one of the few things that let me get away from the craziness and feel free from the uncertainty that was my life.

When I “rediscovered” the show in my late teens, I began going to the MCPL and getting my hands on as many episodes as possible.  VHS tapes were extremely cheap at the time, and I thought I would eventually do something with that collection.  While I’m unsure of how many episodes I currently have, it has to total more than 50.  Little did I know that an infamous hurricane would run me into a crash course with the shows’ producers.

I had just built an amazing computer at the time, and I wanted to condense all of those VHS tapes taking up space in our apartment.  So I made a DVD set of the first 6 episodes for the shows’ creators.  This would start an ongoing collaboration to stabilize the archives of this show.

Four years later, I seemed to be at an impasse.  After buying a home, going to school and having a child on the way, I didn’t seem to have any free time to even relax – let alone work on a “hobby.”  In that time, we had re-worked my original creation into a product that many fans have purchased and enjoy to this day.  I had also done hundreds of hours of work to try to make some damaged episodes of the show up to par.

I have begun work on authoring the DVDs that will become the season one set.  Preliminary results show it will be an 8 disc set.  Due to packaging constraints, it will be split into two volumes; sold as one.  I’m not sure on the price  yet, but I expect it to be in the $30 range.  With 25 episodes, and a few extras – this was a much larger undertaking than the 7 episodes of season zero.

With season zero, I was wet behind the ears.  For season one, I’ve sharpened my skills.

I hope to have all of the preliminary work done within a few weeks.  I’m sure editor b will make some announcement when the time is right.

A special thanks goes out to “roxfan” who sent me a few episodes on DVD.  Without the kind generosity of people like him, this project would still be stalled.  You will be the first to receive a set.  I just need to find your address.  If you read this, leave me a comment and I will get back with you.

These sets are a completely non-profit project.  All charges are for cases, discs, ink, inserts and all other associated costs.  The biggest of the costs being ink.  We might setup a bartering system, to help eliminate costs.

Feel Like a Number

While I am used to feeling like a number in our quantity over quality soceity, something just happened that I have to share.

I attend Ivy Tech Community College, and have since 1999 off and on.  In that time they have exponentially grown to become the school with the largest enrollment in the state of Indiana, with currently over 110,000 students enrolled.  As the state has lost it’s large manufacturing base of employment, people (like me) have went to school to help us find new careers.

Over the past couple of years, communications from the school have went downhill as far as information goes.  Most communications are either a weekly job or volunteer posting, informational updates, or the one that really puts a thorn in my side, “Pick Ivy Tech.”  Essentially an advertisment sent to students.  Why are they wasting money sending letters and emails to people already enrolled asking them to pick Ivy Tech?  Haven’t they already?

This last incident is the “straw that broke the camel’s back.”  The Bloomington campus has outgrown it’s space, and until they can build additions they have leased annex campuses.  While this can be great for situations such as this one, it can also be a nightmare.  The Liberty Drive campus does not have adequate parking.  While it is a pain, I’m not complaining.  I work at IU where parking is sometimes not even a possibility.

This email was sent to all Bloomington students:

Additional Parking Options for Liberty Drive:

1. Park across the street from the Liberty Drive campus. The spaces
reserved for Ivy Tech students are located in the parking lot previously
occupied by the MCL Cafeteria; across the street and just south of the
Liberty campus.

2. Park at the main campus and take the Rural Transit shuttle to the
Liberty Drive campus.

Click the link below to download the Rural Transit schedule:
http://services.bloomington.ivytech.edu/media/pdf/academics/IvyTechBus.pdf

For more information about Rural Transit, go to:
http://www.ivytech.edu/bloomington/about/shuttle.html

While these options are helpful, they create equal if not larger problems.  For those of you who know the area, Liberty Drive is a busy road that has many large businesses on it, and it is a major thoroughfare for the west side of Bloomington.  Also crossing a 4 lane road is a dangerous affair, as a student in high school I remember students being severely injured and even killed on occasion trying to do the same thing to get lunch.  Due to this, MCCSC closed their campuses and upgraded their cafeterias.  There is no intersection near that has a crosswalk, and the road curves at this point as well making visibility for the drivers an issue as well.

I felt a response was necessary to highlight these potentially fatal flaws.  While hindsight is 20/20, I could have left a couple paragraphs and a few remarks out.  I was mainly trying to give them constructive criticism, and point out alternatives.

Here is my response:

While the additional options you have listed are helpful, please let me remind you of the hazards and reasons why these options are not feasible.

1.  Park at MCL.  While there is plenty of parking at that location, and in the scope of things, close, it is also very hazardous.  It is hazardous for the same reasons why Bloomington High School South closed it campus.  People were hurt and died.  It is dangerous for people to cross 4 lanes of traffic at any time on that road, let alone rush hour.  I hope your recommendation does not lead to serious injuries or death for anyone.

2.  Park at the Main Campus and take the Rural Transit.  While this option might be okay for full-time students, but for people like me who work full time and take classes when they can, this is impossible.  I can barely make it to class on time, let alone wait for a bus that comes once or twice an hour.

My wife brought up a great idea that would really ease the parking situation at liberty drive.  Perhaps you could lease (through your agreement with IU) one of their buses to use as a shuttle during the hours when it is needed most.  This dedicated shuttle would be a better option than the rural transit, and make the students really feel like they are cared for.

I for one am tired of the “stupidity” in the communications from this school.  The email you sent was “the straw that broke the camels back” for me.  I don’t need pointless communication, I need real communication.

While this may not be your area, I must say the emails that say “choose Ivy-Tech” are pointless when I’m already attending.  What am I going to do?  Move to another state to attend a community college?

Respectively,

Lee Lawmaster

As I stated, hindsight is 20/20.  Some of my comments were a  mistake, but I was emotionally charged at the time.  I would send an apology for some of my remarks, but as you are about to see it would only make the situation worse.  I sent this email to the person who sent it, and I CC’d the Chancellor of the Bloomington Campus.  I thought it seemed worthy of skipping any chain of command due to the safety issues involved.

Here is the response from the Chancellor:

Lew: You copied me, so let me respond.  Your message was signed “respectively” and I assume you meant “respectfully”. It was neither. If parking is an insurmountable problem for you, I believe a full tuition refund is still available to you through Friday.  Contact Jennie Vaughan in students affairs and she will assist you with your withdrawal.  This concludes responses from campus staff to you on “stupidity” of “pointless” communication on this matter.
————————–
Please excuse any spelling errors.  This message was sent from my PDA.

Whoa!  From everything I’ve heard about this guy, he’s the nicest guy you’d know.  I didn’t mention having a problem parking.

In the end I said some things I shouldn’t have.  I do realize that.  Although you would think a person in that position would see through that and see the serious safety issues with their plan.  Since Ivy Tech has a monopoly on 2 year degrees in Indiana, I don’t have a choice of seeking another institution for education that is affordable.  I know from talking to my fellow students that communications with the school are sub par though.  I guess they just don’t want to listen.

I’ve learned where I don’t want my children to go when they reach college age.

One other note:  I received a mailing yesterday, I made the Dean’s list for the Summer semester of 2009.  While that’s great, I think this overshadows anything I could accomplish at this school.

Going Back to the Darkside

After a call from PC Max regarding my computer, I found out some financially crushing information.  My computer is officially dead.

The motherboard will not respond, I’ve had problems with it since I bought it off of eBay.  I’ll never trust ASUS products, this motherboard was a headache from the word go.  They also said that my video card was starting to show signs of going as some of the capacitors are starting to mushroom.

Their recommendations where to replace it with an “upgrade box” which essentially replaces all the internal parts.  This would have ran about $450.  I built the computer for this cost.  Plus this would be like throwing more money into a big money pit.  As I’ve written about previously, I’ve replaced the motherboard, replaced a hard drive and went through 5 power supplies on this machine alone.  I’m not sure if I work it too hard, or if I’m having some bad luck.

After making some tough choices, we decided to purchase a Dell Optiplex 760.  There are many advantages to purchasing this, but there are some disadvantages.  I will outline them below.

Advantages:

  • 3 year warranty opposed to standard Dell 1 year warranty
  • If any problems happen, I can bring it into TS for service
  • Business class machine that should hold up to whatever I throw at it

Disadvantages:

  • Can only hold 2 hard drives; I currently have 4
  • More costly than building a machine
  • Pushes back my anticipated purchase of a MacBook Pro

While the disadvantages do not outweigh the advantages, they are something to think about.  This machine also has a Intel processor, something I haven’t had since 1995 which was in my first computer, a 486DX2 running at 50mhz.  Since then I have switched to AMD for their better price points with unequaled performance.  I just hope this machine is as good as my old one was.

It’s specs are:

  • Core 2 Duo running at 3.06ghz
  • 4gb of DDR2 ram running at 800mhz
  • 320gb boot hard drive
  • 16x DVD-RW drive
  • 16 in 1 Media Card Reader (for SD/CF and other types of flash memory)
  • On-board video with a digital video adapter card – a good system that is used at IU

I am not purchasing a monitor, keyboard, mouse or any other peripherals with this to save money.  I have all of these items, and don’t really need new ones.  Dell is currently saying I should receive it by September 3rd.

My plan is to buy a new 1.5tb hard drive to replace the space I use on 4 hard drives.  This will let me have the space I need and want via an internal hard drive.  I’m going to sell 3 of those hard drives to try to recoup the cost.  I also need to buy an adapter to get the information off of those old drives.

I’m going to keep my old machine and eventually buy a new motherboard and processor.  It will be my Linux box.  This will also be an addition to all of the extra tax write-offs we will have this year.  With a new child, remodeling my business space and a new computer, we should have a nice tax refund next year.

Half a Decade

Five years ago tomorrow, I became a husband.  While I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into back then, I actually appreciate it now.  Five years really doesn’t sound like much, but it’s an accomplishment in today’s world.

Throughout these years, Rachel and I have accomplished many things together.  We bought a house, she got her master’s degree, I lost my job and now our newest adventure, our first child.

Our lives before each other were as different as night and day, but our beliefs have kept us close in many ways.  I think it’s the core reason why our bond has lasted.  It’s a case of opposites attracting.  Our bond has done nothing but grow closer over time, something I hope doesn’t end anytime soon.

We will be celebrating our 5th anniversary with a trip down to French Lick.  We’re going to spend a night at the French Lick Springs Hotel and perhaps do a little gambling.  The traditional gift of the 5 year anniversary is wood.  While the trip is our gift to each other, I have to break the rules and buy a present.  While I can’t say what it is yet, I know she will be pleasantly surprised.

I hope to get a chance to relax, as I haven’t had much time to do that in a while.  School starts back up in 11 days, and I’m back to work at TS full time right now, but that will be scaled back to 24 hours a week at the end of the month.

Today is my father’s 58th birthday as well, I called and left him a message this morning.  I hope he got it.  I love you dad.

August is a very busy month for us.  My father’s birthday on the 13th, our anniversary on the 14th and Taylor’s birthday on the 26th.

Winding Down

My summer is quickly drawing to a close.  My last class for the summer semester is tomorrow, I start working at TS again on August 10th and the birth of my second child is becoming more imminent as each day passes.

I’ve been pre-ocupied with class and remodeling the nursery.  I don’t feel like the progress is coming along like I wanted it to with the nursery.

This is the first room that will be “complete” in the house.  While we have painted, installed doors, ect.  One thing we haven’t done is change our trim from stained to painted.  This room will be.  Once little one is born, we will take a remodeling break and then change the trim, each room at a time.

I’m very happy that I was able to take a break from work this summer and focus on my studies.  While I only have one grade posted thus far, I believe I’ll have 3 A’s and a C.  The C is due to some weird quizzes that had wrong answers!  The professor would sometimes throw a few points our way, but nothing that made up for the loss.  I now have a greater appreciation of what it’s like to be a college student.  If our finances could support it, I’d like to continue going full time until I complete my degree.

My computer’s power supply died again, at least it’s still under warranty.  I took it into PC Max, but it will probably be a couple of weeks before its return due to Antec’s slow warranty claim process.

We bought a new car, well new to us.  With the impending arrival of a new member of the family, we needed a more family friendly vehicle.  I didn’t want to trade in my truck, but I did due to it’s much higher trade-in value than the Kia.  We bought a 2007 Chevrolet HHR 1LT.  We’ve rented them on two occasions and love them!  It looks small, but has a lot more room than you would think it does.

Once I get some time to coordinate my thoughts, I’ll write something with more focus.  In the meantime, if you’re my friend on twitter or facebook – I’ll keep you updated.