lisaviolet's diary

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

otherstuff
09:29 AM - 05/15/2012

The topic: Back in 2008, I had an external hard drive crash
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I lost lots of movies that I’d taken. I was sad that I hadn’t done a backup. I’d planned on it, but never got around to it.

The guy who worked on it found some movies and photos and sent it back with a CD of the files he was able to recover. I can’t find the CD.

Well, for some reason, yesterday I started wondering about it. I wish I’d do this wondering in the mornings, but, alas, it usually happens late afternoon. And I act on it. I went into the garage, pulled the box the drive was in out of one of the storage cabinets, then came in and hooked it up to the computer I got on Woot back in 2010. The computer that has 6gb of RAM and Win7 Pro.

Well, look at that. The computer sees the drive, but it need to “be formatted”. Hmmm…

I downloaded a couple of different data recovery programs and started to run them. I wasn’t real happy with them. One found some stuff but nothing was viewable. Then I went over to the topten review site for data recovery programs and checked out the first one. Stellar Phoenix. I went to the website and there was a free version (I’ve become very fond of try before you buy software, too many times I’ve purchased before being able to buy). I installed and ran it and before I knew it, there was a list of files it had found. A long list! Yay!

So, I tried to view the list. Oh, now I have to buy it. Damnit. But I salivated looking at that list….I bought it. $49.00. For something I thought would be gone forever. I started the recovery. If it didn’t work, I had already decided to contact the company and request a refund. Since the trial wasn’t fully functional. What good is seeing what’s there if it can’t be properly recovered? A few small files had finished and I was able to view movies. Taken with my first camera that could also take video. Only fifteen seconds, no audio, but there they were. Movies I thought I’d never see again. I started to cry. I could hardly wait until they were all recovered!

This was the time consuming part. The restructering of the files. I shut down most of the equipment and left that computer running, fixing my files.

Went into the family room, had a glass of chocolate milk, some water and watched the news. Then we went to bed.

Bad idea, drinking fluids that late. I got up to pee at least eight times. And a couple of times, I came back to check the progress of the recovery. Then I’d push the button and turn off the monitor. About the third time I checked, I pushed the wrong button. Shut down the computer instead of the monitor. Argh!

This morning at seven, I started the recovery again, but it started from the beginning. And this time, it’s not the quick scan, this is a much deeper scan. Over 927,000,000 sections to scan and it’s on 219,000,000. Oh, well, it’s not like I was planning on being busy in here today, anyway. And who knows how much more stuff it will find? Hopefully it will only take a couple of days, but it’s a 1TB drive.

I just have to be very, very careful which button I hit.

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Thursday, May 03, 2012

otherstuff
07:38 AM - 05/03/2012

The topic: One of the things I hate about me is that when I’ve got a lot to do, I get nothing done
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And the thing is, the lot I’ve got to do is a lot of little things. Just added up, they’re a lot. So, why do I feel so overwhelmed? I could just start doing them, finish one at a time and then they wouldn’t be hanging over my head and leaving me overwhelmed.

Just damn. Well, so far today I’ve put the throw rugs from the office into the laundry, vacuumed the office, washed the many instances of glaring cat pee off of the office floor (used that xfusion or whatever it is, first, let it set, then wiped down with a clean wet towel). My to do paperwork is in neat stacks, I need to get started on those (we still don’t have an efficient system with Brian’s new company - he emails quotes to the customer, I’m *supposed* to get copies of them, I then input them as “estimates” into Quickbooks. Then when the quote is paid, I’m supposed to let him know as I get the message that the customer has paid. Sometimes they pay with a credit card, others with paypal. He sees paypal, I do not. It’s just very unorganized and right now, it’s very fluid because we’re still trying to figure out how to do it. It’s not like his old company at all.

And certain things I see hit me like an off switch. Like when the neighbor leaves the gate open. It throws me off my stride, it messes up my day. The last time we saw this, Brian said “well, go close it”. I did and things were better. It’s just really odd. Sometimes I think that whatever my mom had has passed down to me, although it’s diluted. It’s one of the reasons I had the rugs in the laundry before I was even dressed. I need to get work done in here (the office) and when I see the cat sprayed areas, I’m useless for anything else. If I cleaned them up immediately, I’m sure things would be much better, but I always see them when I’m already doing something and thing “I’ll do that later”.

Just damn.

And it doesn’t help that my allergies are in full swing right now, the right side of my jaw hurts from grinding my teeth, I’m grinding my teeth because my stupid right ear keeps feeling like it has to pop. As I mentioned previously, the doctor told me that it was allergies and to take something for it. The only thing in the house that works is Benedryl. And we all know that Benedryl is not non-drowsy.

It’s been cloudy for over a week (heavy marine layer, the marine is over twenty miles away, but the marine clouds are so thick, they’re almost to our local mountains). Maybe next week we’ll see some blue sky and sun, but it’s starting to wear me out. I need the sun.

Oh, well, back to work. Maybe I can make some headway today.

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Sunday, April 29, 2012

otherstuff
10:12 AM - 04/29/2012

The topic: Why do I have to make things so difficult…
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Yay! I figured out what I was doing wrong when trying to allow myself access to my user account on the Win7 pc from the WinXP pc.

I took some video last year at Disneyland and couldn’t find the cassette. Spent hours going through every one I had with no luck. Started before noon yesterday. (I keep them in a different room than the computers.) I did find one from the end of last year with a lunar eclipse on it and Disney’s World of Color taken from a hotel room. So I knew that I changed to a new cassette before taking that lunar eclipse, which I took here at home, so it had to be here somewhere. It wouldn’t be in luggage or left at a hotel or in the car.

For some reason, I can’t capture video to the XP. I know it’s a driver problem, but I can’t find the right driver so I capture the video on the Win7 machine. I was using Corel’s VS5 to look through all of the cassettes and it wasn’t on any of them. I did find a camera I forgot I have looking for any stray cassettes in the camera bags and pulled out the compact flash card and tried to view it (just to see what was on it) and I needed a different card reader and it had something stuck in it (cheap reader). I reached for a paperclip and in the office, behind some clips, on a desk lamp stand, I found two cassettes! And one of them was the right one! Yay! Over seven hours of my life gone forever! But I’ve got my tape!

Now I just need to get it onto the hard drive and transferred over to the XP, where all of my graphic and video programs live (Sony DVD Architect, Corel VideoStudio 5, DVDIt, DVD Factory, DVD Workshop 2, NewBlueFX plugins, Magix, Sony Vegas Movie Studio…).

Problem was there were some problems with it and it kept stopping when I used the VS5 program to capture. I did a little research and found that the Windows Movie Maker captures the entire tape without marking scenes, just what I needed. What sucks is I knew that MM plays nicely, yet I spent a couple of hours trying to get VS5 to work. Anyway, I got the full hour captured onto the computer into my user file on the Win7 machine, now just needed to transfer it over to the WinXP machine. I finally shut it down at eleven last night. I’m tired…..yawn….

Took about an hour to figure out why it wasn’t working, I mean, I saw the folder on the network (all of our computers are on our home network, makes it easier for me to work with them), I just couldn’t access it. Watched the little MS video help and nailed it! File is transferring as I type. Woohoo!

Oh, I figured out why the cassette was in the office, not the extra room. The last ten minutes of the missing tape had ten minutes of lunar eclipse on it. So, I changed it here in the office and just set it aside when I put in a new tape to finish recording the eclipse. Which is one of the things I told Brian over dinner. When I can’t find something like that, I start thinking about my standard operating procedure. I rarely tape over anything, I just start a new tape. I found four that had under five minutes of recording on them.

One of these days, I’ll get them all transferred over to disk and use one of those carousel things to store the disks. Probably when we redo the office and open up some room. (What worked for us twenty years ago, isn’t working for us now. Our “desks” are glass attached to the walls on three sides of the room.)

Anyway, I’m waiting for one more set of photos and I’ll have no excuses left to make the annual video of our yearly visit. I sure have fun doing it.

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Friday, April 27, 2012

catstuff
12:37 PM - 04/27/2012
We found a nickel on our walk this morning

The topic: I had a scare with Kirby this morning
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Kirby is our oldest kitty who has had some health issues most of his life. He blocked so often that the vet advised his penis be removed years ago. He hates the vet’s office (he had been in for catheterization more times than I remember, in the months before his surgery, he was in at least twice a month) and we don’t take him in. Luckily, he’s not had anything really bad going on, just a gradual downhill slide that comes with aging. He’s over seventeen right now, we got him the day before we got Benny so long ago.

Anyway, he’s a special eater. He gets special food that the other cats don’t get. Well, they get it, just added to and watered down in their evening meal. He gets it straight.

In the morning I’ll split a can of Friskies between he and Miss Elizabeth. They eat it in my bathroom on the counter with the door closed so the other cats don’t bother them (bunch of vultures). Well, Kirby has been peeing in my bathroom after he’s done. I spent over an hour cleaning the floor (that funky laminate that Brian really wanted to test out, even though I kept telling him the cats would ruin it…well, they did, I swear you could trip over the seams, but it still needs cleaning until it can be pulled up and something less high maintenance can be put in) and setting up those SSSScat cans of air. They did a great job of keeping the cats from peeing in the corner and behind the toilet, but Kirby started peeing ON the toilet and the urine ended up next to and behind the toilet bowl.

Which is what I didn’t want to happen anymore.

Miss ate in the bathroom, started yowling “I’m done! Let me out” shortly after she’d gone in. Brian let her out, asked “she didn’t eat much, what do you want me to do with the food?” I yelled back “give it to Georgie!” (I was feeding Kirby.) Then she went into the kitchen, walked back out and puked up her breakfast. She went back into the bathroom and started screaming for more food. I gave her a can of Fancy Feast.

So, this morning, I fed Kirby outside of the bathroom. Sitting next to me on the sofa, keeping the other cats away while he ate. This is how he normally eats the rest of the day, he finds me wherever I am, starts yelling at me to feed him and doesn’t stop yelling until I do. Sometimes he gets A/D, sometimes he gets Fancy Feast with human tuna in it. The mornings, though, he gets Friskies with Miss E. He finishes eating, Brian has cooked our breakfast, we eat, we had bacon and although Kirby loves bacon and he did come over to the table, he didn’t show much interest in any. He ate a little piece then just walked off. He climbed back onto the loveseat and started to sleep.

I came back into the office and noticed George didn’t eat much of it, either. Hmm. Placed it on the floor for the other cats, who nommed it right up.

So, Brian has to leave and run some errands, when he’s getting his keys, I see Kirby on the loveseat. Foam is dripping from his mouth. I’ve never, in my life, seen this on a cat who hadn’t just been pilled. I run over to him, wipe his mouth. He’s definitely not feeling well. He tries to stand up, he’s pretty weak. OMG, this is it, we’re losing him, I think. I tell Brian to just go ahead and let Kirby rest. I check his eyes, they’re very dilated. My first thought is Lisa, how her eyes were dilated when she went blind (the same week we lost her). I get a flashlight, shine it into his eyes, the pupil shrinks, he’s not blind. I’ve wiped the foam from his face and give him a few tiny bits of water. He swallows, keeps it down. He’s having a hard time breathing, at least that’s what it looked like. He purrs for me and responds to butt scritches (arching his back). He finally settles down and goes back to sleep. I let him, I creep in every few minutes to watch him breathe. Not labored, completely normal.

I’m flummoxed.

Then I see the towel that covers the arm of the loveseat (and the front of it, to prevent scratching). There is puke all the way down it. A little puddle on the floor under the towel. And it dawns on me.

There was something wrong with that can of food. Miss throws it up first, George won’t eat it and then Kirby puked it up (the foam was probably the funky puke taste in his mouth).

Damn it. We’re a quarter of the way into the box and nothing like this happened with any of the others, so I’m hoping it was one bad can.

Poor little Purr Kitty.

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