I referenced Star Trek twice in the last half hour at work.
Both times work related and fitting to the situation.
I feel like I’ve crossed over into the dirty side of geekdom.
Archive for April, 2007
My brother scooped me on this one… But I’ve got the rest of the story!
As he posted, we received the following support e-mail:
“Well it had to happen sOMETIME I THINK I ScrewED UP MY LAP TOP I Spilled glue on the left sIDE OF MY KEY BOARD NOW i get indicriminate letter flucuation’s UPPER AND LOWer casE Words IF THIS contin ues MY CUStomers Will thin i have a sEVERE CASe of a. d.d. this IS not going to wORK FOR ME IF THIS connot be deglued i wILL NEED A NEW L T”
And now the rest of the story…
We both thought it was a joke but found out the next morning that it was true. And the best part?
The user spilled the glue while attaching a lucky penny to his laptop.
100% true.
I have a 500 gig Western digital MyBook external drive. One day I hooked it up to my computer and it would not power up (for the purposes of this post, the background as to why it might not boot up is irrelevant ;-)). Horror! Of course I didn’t have everything backed up - time to start saving money for a second 500 gig drive I guess. Western Digital sent me a replacement drive but told me that my data was lost unless I wanted to talk to their data recovery department and that it would most likely be costly. After reading a bit on the ‘net, common opinion was the power or USB on the MyBook was likely the cause - that these elements were not as robust as the drive itself. After a little more research and some playing I did manage to disassemble the MyBook, recover my data, and return it to Western Digital (as pristine as possible so hopefully I did not obviously void any warranties - which would be ridiculous since I just wanted *MY* data back from *THEIR* broken drive).
Here’s what I was looking for on the ‘net and did not find. Hope this helps someone else. Click any of the images for a larger image.
(1) There is a black sticker covering one screw securing the case. Remove this sticker (mine was more like black paint that chipped off) and remove this screw.
(2) On both the top and bottom of the drive there are plastic “catches” that must be pressed in to allow you to slide the outer case off the drive. See the next picture for a clear view of the “catches” with the case off. It may be tricky getting both sides pressed in at the same time to slide off the case. On my drive, I used a flat-head screwdriver to push one side in and a little to the side to lodge it just a little under the plastic case so it would stop popping back up again. Be careful not to push in too far and break the “catches” off.
(3) Slide the case off. In truth, easier said than done so don’t cuss me out when you try it. I had to use my fingernails and pry the edges of the solid black case away from the drive unit and just keep carefully working at it until I could get it to start coming apart. When you’re doing it, you’ll see what I’m talking about.
(4) Remove four screws securing the drive unit to the inner case.
(5) There is a small circuit board attached for the LED power light that you need to remove to make the drive easier to get out of the case. Remove the three screws holding it on and gently unplug it from it’s connection on the drive unit.
(6) Peel back the foil tape so that you can access the power and data connector on the drive. Unplug the connector attached to the drive. This is a SATA hard drive and can be hooked up to a desktop computer (that accepts SATA drives) or I’ve seen adaptors on the ‘net that you can plug into a SATA drive to turn it into a regular IDE drive (not exactly something most people have laying about though). I happened to have a DELL Optiplex in the office that uses SATA drives so I opened it up and hooked the second power connector coming off the main drive to my newly freed MyBook drive. I still needed a SATA cable so I “borrowed” one from another office computer to connect the drive to the motherboard. If you are unfamiliar with all this, just look at how the main drive is hooked up - it’s not rocket science.
(7) On my DELL Optiplex I had to go into setup when the computer started and enable the second SATA drive. Okay, I didn’t know to do this right off - the drive just didn’t show up and after scratching my head for a few minutes I rebooted and checked setup. After this everything showed up fine - there was ALL my pretty data. I attached my new MyBook and moved everything over. Note - over 350 gig of data takes a while to transfer.
For the curious, all pics were taken with my Verizon LG8000 cellphone and quickly edited in Photoshop.
Poopyheads.
All the posts about Starbucks lately reminded me of a pic I took there a while back.
Seems the cult of Starbucks extends to Dementors. This was taken just outside the window while I was standing in line for a Chai. I guess the allure of overpriced java extends far beyond our earthly plane. Creepy.
Starbucks Dementor
For comparison, here’s a Dementor pic from the world of Harry Potter…
If you’re going to be stranded somewhere when your car doesn’t work, you could do a lot worse than a Starbucks. Drink. Food. Music. Comfy chair. Internet access (well, okay, only if you pay for it - $5 for a drink and the cheap b*stards won’t give free access *grr*). Truthfully, aside from the lack of Internet (and I think I might have been able to pick up the next door McDonald’s access) I would have rather stayed there than go to work this morning! 
On the more serious side… perhaps setting up the work environment a little more “friendly” would make a big difference. It’d be cool to walk into my own offices and see everyone working in a laid back, comfortable, aesthetically pleasing environment. Ever notice how the president of the company’s office looks more like a home den? I’m guessing if the whole building looked more like that, though, then he wouldn’t feel special or like he was in power over the masses… Oh well, for the rest of us we still have broken cars in front of Starbucks.
I purchased a music CD today.
Felt weird.
Starbucks has the right idea, though. Compile a reasonably priced CD of songs by newer artists, older or lesser known artists, or that make a unique mix. If you counter the ability to find or easily download the artists or make it time intensive to find all the songs for the mix then the pendulum swings back toward time/cost-effectiveness for the consumer (me!) to actually buy the CD (I did!). Unless, of course, someone starts ripping the Starbucks compilations and proliferating them online…
I saw a news story tonight on a local school increasing ISTEP scores (Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus). “Wow,” I thought, “That’s great!” Then they showed some children talking about how if they “just didn’t get it” they just kept going over their questions over and over again until they got it. The rest of the report showed kids drilling on problems. Rinse lather repeat - over and over on the same problems. Something clicked. We’re teaching kids ISTEP. Not *educating* them. Teaching them ISTEP. Watch out other countries - the next generation of Americans (somehow I’m betting it’s not just my glorious state of Indiana) will *STOMP* you in ISTEP. Forget about knowledge or life skills. Give us a memorized standardized test and we’ll kick your foreign free-thinking masses.
Here’s an ISTEP question for everybody.
ISTEP
Goosestep
Which one of these things is just like the other?
You know what’s smart? Eating part of a chocolate bar while laying on your back. In a yellow shirt. Even better, sitting up and seeing a few melting flecks of chocolate and thinking, hey, I’ll just lick them out before they get into the fabric! Then removing the shirt from my - I realized - chocolate coated mouth revealing a much larger brown smudge reminiscent of the big sucker monster from an old Star Trek episode.
Oh yes, *much* better than a small melting speck of chocolate no one would hardly notice on an old yellow t-shirt. But wait… I took off the shirt and hand washed it in the bathroom sink using a soft bristled brush and circular scrubbing pattern until I got the stain out. See! Guys can channel a little Martha Stewart.
Plus, tomorrow morning my tooth brush will taste like mint *and* chocolate! Score!
My girlfriend is reading “Pursuit of Happyness“.
Three quarters of the way through the book, her comment was, “Geez, I wish they’d get to the good part. He’s not even homeless yet.”
Ah, the things Hollywood makes entertaining for us.
To be fair, I know what she really meant. The movie took a lot of liberties with the story. Page through the book some time next time you are in the bookstore. The “meat” of the movie was about a father trying to make ends meet and survive as a single parent with his son - and he went through a traumatic time being homeless. So, that really was the “good”, or more apt “touching”, part of the story. Very different from the true events of the book.