| As the subject may have suggested to many of you, I'm thinking about dropping my long-standing aversion to social networking sites. The roomie's use of Twitter has made it look kind of tempting, and I've found more and more people looking at me as if they think I'm some sort of Luddite when I tell them that I neither Facebook nor MySpace. Luddite? Moi? I don't think so. There's also a growing number of people and groups that would be easier to keep track of that way.
I stayed up fairly late last night, but I finally got pretty much everything on the old laptop up and running again. I reinstalled the OS a few days ago with a Kubuntu variant. There were a few little problems with the default configuration, though, so I've spent the last couple evenings fixing those. The big one was no sound, fixed as of the day before yesterday. The weird thing on that one was that the sound actually worked until I opened up the windows manager. For those of you in the clutches of Micro$oft, that's like having it work in DOS but cut out as soon as Windows boots up. Strange, but fixed. Getting DVDs to play is a typical Linux problem, but that I've done quite a few times. Last night's project was getting the dedicated volume keys to work. Mission accomplished, but with one small problem; the LED on the mute button isn't working. Not critical, but I may dig into that later.
In addition to my other flavors of geekage, I've been playing a lot of Fallout 3. Something odd struck me about it. There are first aid boxes mounted on the walls in lots of places, sometimes half a dozen of them in a fairly large building. That's to serve the needs of people who can be reloaded from their last save if things go really wrong. When was the last time you saw a bunch of well-labeled, fully stocked first aid kits around the real world, where people can most definitely not reload an earlier copy of themselves if they get a leg blown off or something? The idea that video game characters in a post-apocalyptic setting have better options for self treatment than real people just kind of leaped out at me. Make of it what you will, and by all means comment if you have an insight. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Well, I now number myself once again among the ranks of the employed. Gainfully remains to be seen. My first paycheck will be for all of two hours. Maybe $10 after taxes? Anyhow, it's something. So far the job doesn't seem to suck too badly, although it's early to say as yet. I haven't really been placed anywhere within the store as yet, and that will effect things. Doing all my time on a cash register would definitely increase the suck factor as opposed to merchandise processing. Still, I think my odds of staying in the backroom and actually getting to do stuff are pretty good. The others that were hired along with me were mostly younger women, intensely social and not likely to volunteer for the dirty, heavy jobs. Maybe that's just me being a stereotyping sexist bastard, though.
In gardening news, I just noticed today that there's a watermelon growing on my vine. The happy little bees have finally done their damn jobs. It's a cute little melon, approximately the size of a gumball. I got two more bunches of basil harvested today also. The pot that one of my plant lives in took a tumble off the railing, so it looks like there won't be fresh parsley in my future. Maybe next year. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| -¡Mamá!-dijo Fred, como si acabara deverla, y también le estrechó la mano-.
Stolen from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) graveyardgreg:
Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence and these instructions.
Don't dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST book.
That was Harry Potter y el prisionero de Azkaban. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| As I write this, my novel has just crept up over 40,000 words. To celebrate I thought I'd share an excerpt of the timeless prose/horrendous shlock (choose one) that I've been writing. To quote one of my favorite Stephen King characters, "May it do ya fine."
Clink-clink, groan. "What's going on here?" the Admin rasped at me blearily, finally having regained consciousness.
"I got bored," I said, "so I decided that we should switch places."
"I see," the Admin said, rubbing his eyes with his unbound hand. The moment might have been more satisfying if he'd seemed dismayed by the revelation. "May I have some water?"
"Why should I give you any after all you've done?" I demanded. I think that deep down I'd been waiting for him to wake up so that I'd have an excuse to vent my frustrations.
"I would have given it to you when you were my prisoner," the Admin said. "If you think about it you'll realize that I could have treated you far more harshly, but didn't."
"Because you needed my body intact," I retorted, but tossed him a bottle of water anyway. "Still, I suppose the novelty of having the Admin ask me for something deserves to be acknowledged."
"Emiliano," the Admin said.
"What?"
"Emiliano," he repeated. "My name is Emiliano Vargas. It seems I'm no longer the administrator of anything." He'd wedged his water bottle between his knees and was struggling to unscrew the cap one-handed.
That jolted me. For all that I knew that he was just another man, early habits of belief aren't easily shrugged off. Having your god, no matter how poor a god he might be, tell you that you've put him out of work, and at the same time ask you to call him by his first name? That's bound to be unsettling.
"Emiliano," I said, the shape of the name feeling odd on my lips.
This project is my single longest written work ever, although it's my second attempt at a novel. I've spent a lot of years consorting with writers, being a beta-reader and occasional co-writer, but I've never really thought of myself as a writer before now, even while the previous novel was in the works. It occurs to me that Sam Hill (the main character of the current project and the "I" referred to in the excerpt) would have the makings of a writer if he were in a less turbulent setting. He has to push back his boundaries, and he lives the question "What if?" with every fiber of his being. Given the opportunity he'd write something other than the story he finds himself in, I think. He's less prone to flights of fancy than his creator. He'd likely write mysteries if he were bitten by the writing bug, not the science fiction that has given him birth. The genre would suit his analytical nature.
The experience of writing reminds me of one of the common pitfalls that most people fall into when learning to juggle (which I've never managed). Writing is like joggling, which for those among you who haven't heard the term, is the tendency to throw a ball slightly forward, so that you have to step forward to catch it. One of those tiny errors in trajectory leads to another, then another, until the neophyte juggler ends up at a full run trying to keep his hands under the balls. Writing is a lot like that. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The book: Satellite Projects Handbook: Weather Satellites and Beyond by Lawrence Harris
Okay, I'll admit it; A book on home use of satellites is way geeky to begin with. The market for books on the subject is fairly narrow. This book... well, I think I would've preferred an author with a little less enthusiasm and a little more skill. The information given isn't bad, precisely. It's badly arranged, choked at the very beginning with anecdotes that don't really go much of anywhere. Most of the emphasis is on the why instead of the how of the matter, ignoring that anyone who took the time to pick up the book must have at least a tiny why of their own. Black and white renderings of what were presumably color pictures turn up often, most of them showing faint blobs against a black background. The pictures are captioned of course, but the visible light image of Greenland could just as easily have been salt spilled on a dark tablecloth. Published as it was in 1996, the book also has suffered from the passage of time and become severely dated. If you feel the need to check this book out, I would advise skipping on to Appendix 3. The information on Kepler elements found there hasn't been changed by the last 13 years, making it more useful than advice about how to find satellites that burned up or were decommissioned while I was still in college, and far more useful than tips on squeezing the maximum performance out of a computer with a 386 processor. If you're curious about satellites, just use your Google-fu. No matter what you get it will likely be less numbing. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, I got word back on the interview. This time the third interview wasn't magic. Bugger. My saga of destitution continues. I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't just pack it in and reapply at the den of evil from which I fled.
I know that the odds are against me, that any given job for which I interview has about 300 other applicants. Still, it's hard not to wonder what I'm doing wrong. Things are feeling semi-hopeless.
I think it's time to expand my search pattern and start seriously pounding the pavement in the real world instead of just working the internet angle. There are some risks to that, unfortunately, although like so many of my problems they're outgrowths of my own neuroses. If I feel like I've genuinely tried anything and I still don't see any success it risks a big-time emotional crash. Normally those are followed by erratic, ill-advised, thoroughly rash actions. One of those has already tried its luck during one of my darker moments: enlisting for military service, something that I'm still just barely young enough to do. I fought it off, but the shadowy part of my mind where desperation lurks is also the home to my creativity, so who knows what's next?
Please pardon the lapse into self-pity, self-deceptions, and any other self-things that I've forgotten to mention. Hopefully it's better to express them and move on that to let them fester. Livejournal may yet save me from the ghost of neurosis yet-to-come! Yay, a cheerful thought!
I cut back the mint in the garden today. It was in pretty sad shape, insect-ravaged. I harvested what little there was in good shape and hung it up to dry. The remaining 90 percent I wove into a wreath for lack of anything better to do with it. With a little luck the roots will survive and give me a more successful crop next year, possibly even this fall. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, I interviewed for another job today. That's interview number three in my quest for greener pastures. It's odd, but looking back on previous job-hunting experiences I've generally landed the third one that I've interviewed for. Perhaps that's a good omen. *crosses fingers* Maybe I'm being paranoid, but it seems to me that my experiences with the company in question so far might pass for tests of patience and dedication. And so our story begins...
I finally heard back from the company more than six weeks after submitting an online application. As online apps go this one was pretty short, requesting that you paste in a résumé rather than fill in a bunch of forms for job history. I was thrilled, since filling in those forms has gotten to be something of a drag, mostly from the sheer repetition of it all. Eventually I got a call from their national level recruiter. Unfortunately, it came while I was in the shower. She left a message asking that I return her call. I did, and got her voicemail. After a few volleys of phone-tag we spoke in person. I was given a pre-screening over the phone, which apparently I passed, since she called back a few days later. She told me that someone more local would be getting in touch with me to confirm the tentative interview date that we'd set. That was Thursday, right before the holiday weekend. When I still hadn't heard anything by yesterday afternoon I gave the national level recruiter a call-back and asked what was up. In the meantime I'd gotten an email asking me to fill out a more conventional online app, which I did. A few hours after my call the national gal must've lit a fire under the regional gal, so I finally got my chance to beg for a job in person confirmed.
I snapped awake after almost six hours of sleep. My subconscious favored me with a story of an alien invasion that had humanity on the run, fighting back guerrilla-warfare style trying to save our place on Earth. Think Terminator crossed with War of the Worlds and you'll be on the right track. It would've been a hell of a movie, but it wasn't a restful experience by any stretch of the imagination.
I arrived at about 11:15 for my 11:30 interview. It took five minutes or so for someone to be free to tell the store manager that I was there, and another five before they told me that he was in an unexpected conference call and would be until noon. Not a problem, since I've run on this particular exercise wheel often enough that I brought a book along with me. Also, the store was right next to a Starbucks, so I went off to get myself a green-tea lemonade to sip at while I waited. So I sat and sipped and reread Walden by Thoreau. At five minutes to noon I was just about to close the book and mentally prep myself (again) for the interview. That was when the assistant manager came over and collected me. The long-awaited interview finally began. It was two-on-one in format, with me on one side of the desk and both the store and the assistant store manager on the other. I was told that there would be three parts to the interview. I would talk them through my résumé, they would ask two to four pre-formulated questions about how I'd handled circumstances in the past, and then I would be able to ask any questions of them that I saw fit.
The first portion didn't go too badly. My biggest error was skipping straight past my education to my work history. They asked a few questions along the way, and I tried to give them time to ask more instead of just hurrying past things. Pretty good. Some of their questions weren't easy to answer without painting a particular former employer in a bad light, but I did my best with it.
Their questions were a little harder. I had reviewed a few scenarios in my head beforehand, but most of the questions were just slightly off from what I'd rehearsed. I adapted as best I could on the fly, but my normally copious reserves of bullshit tend to go dry when I'm under the right kind of stress. They went through three or four questions, so I must've done alright on at least the first two, I'm hoping. I couldn't tell you now what I said, or even what the questions were exactly. It was the shakiest part of my performance, I would say.
Round three was easy. I asked about the availability of hours, what kind of benefits, that sort of thing. If I'd felt a little more confident of my rapport with them I might've asked how I could have interviewed better, but I decided on the better part of valor and got the hell out of there instead of stretching it out yet further. I should hear in a week, give or take, one way or the other.
The tension that had mostly stayed at bay leading up to the interview snapped into place after it was over.
Okay world, it's official: I'm willing to sell out the traces of conscience and morality that I've scraped together if it means that I don't have to crawl back to the old employer. I'm holding out for fresh, new degradation. You have to draw the line somewhere, after all. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, I finally got a call back from AT&T regarding my application a couple months ago. The pre-screening call apparently went well enough, so my info is being forwarded to the local store. Hopefully I'll be hearing from them soonish. It was a tremendous morale boost just to know that my pleas to serve for a fair wage aren't falling on completely deaf ears.
As far as the garden goes, things are coming along well. A plant that I'd misidentified came into bloom for the first time in four years, cluing me in on it being Sedum Reflexum. I splurged on a few fresh packets of seed a while back, and two, possibly three of the four have sprouted, despite late planting. My catnip has just come into bloom, and one of the sage cuttings that I planted seems to have taken root. The chives are continuing their bid for global conquest, despite being pruned weekly for use in scrambled eggs. Only the fennel is an absolute no-show, but since I planted it in the poor, acidic local soil I'm not too surprised. The neighbor-lady potted up some of her lavender for me, although I was disappointed to find out that it's a non-culinary variety. Despite that, I'm trying my best to be sure that it survives, and have tried to establish several cuttings taken from it just in case. Too soon to tell on all counts.
Last but not least there's my novel. The wordcount is sitting just a touch over 36,000 words, and my hero has just solved a word problem in his head. How long would human hair grow in a quarter of a billion years? I'm proud to report that he (& I) passed with flying colors, although since I'm not native to the metric system I had to use a calculator to translate the approximately half-inch per month that hair grows into millimeters. Rapunzel must've had a hell of a time staying alive in the Paleozoic era, that's all I have to say on the matter. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | The roomie and I wandered to Starbucks yesterday for another write-off. I pulled ahead, but only because she was doing some note taking, making sure that her foundation was crack-free. I on the other hand am used to dealing with the possibility that I may be cracked, so I dashed on headlong, gaining nearly 3,000 words. The villain finally overcame his bout of Sauron syndrome and took the stage. He's a talkative bugger with a tendency to giggle, so he's wonderful for word count. When I left off he was flying over a radiation-poisoned South Pacific toward Ecuador, having taken my reluctant hero as a hostage. The hero has already nodded off once at the monologing, but paid the price for sleeping with his hands zip-tied behind his back. The poor boy has numb legs, a deep ache in his wrist, and shooting pains in his shoulders, not to mention a crick in his neck and a horrible taste in his mouth. I bet he'd really like it if I get back to work soon so that he can move on with his life. We'll see if that's in the cards for today. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The roomie and I have been dueling with our word count total for a week. She's winning right now, but she also started her project first and has been at the writing thing longer, so I'm not too crushed. I had to break off the last session as the villain was about to appear, though, which was a definite downer. Still, I'm hovering near 30k words.
In browsing my friends list I tripped across a reference to a book that I now must have, "Deadly Doses: A Writer's Guide to Poisons" by Serita Deborah Stevens and Anne Klarner. I'll be waiting until I actually have some income (assuming I can't find a copy reaaallly cheap on ebay, but must have. Oh yes, it will be mine. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| No wordcount on the writing project today, but I've gotten in some good research and note-taking. I may get to work later on in the evening, if I'm feeling it.
There's a scene coming up in which the entire habitat in which the story so far has taken place will be anesthetized. The initial plan was chloroform, then I started looking into ether. A little research has shown both to be within the capabilities of my characters to make. Just one little problem; ether is highly flammable. What happens when an enclosed space full of electronic equipment is filled with flammable gas? I'll leave that to your imagination. Chloroform it is, or will be.
A good-sized chunk of my day was spent puttering in the garden. While I was chopping down weeds, I found a surprise. It was a second case of greatly delayed gardening. The first time was a few years back, Alyssum seed that I'd broadcast in the vague hope that it might do something ended up sprouting over a year and a half later. This time the carrots that I planted last spring started growing this year.
The sequence went like this: *chop* *chop* Hey! Those don't look like any of the local weeds. They look kind of like... No. They couldn't be. *dig* *dig* *dig* *exposes tiny orange root* W00t! *reburies micro-carrot*
In light of my abject failures at scientific gardening, this year I'm doing chaotic gardening. Seeds from wildly different plants are being put in the same containers. The criteria for combination is "Whatever seems like a good idea at the time." Only about a third of the plantings are labeled. Most of the seed is past its prime and iffy on whether it'll germinate. It's kind of exciting, wondering what I'll actually end up growing and how long it'll take me to identify it when it sprouts. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| The writing is still ripping along when I visit the coffee-hose daemon (In case of confusion, see previous post). I came in at right around 1900 words for today, and am finally getting into the meat of the story after a heaping helping of character development and world building. There's more of that to come, naturally, but the trend is toward it being the side-dish instead of the main course.
Brainstorming for the project got a boost in the form of Freemind, a mind-mapping productivity tool. The roomie tripped across is yesterday and has converted me already.
As a tool it's wonderful, and it's helping me identify some of the problems I'll face before I actually run into them. It's not a silver bullet, though. Should the hero chase the villain out of town or should he be run out of town because he accidentally nerve-gassed a few people? Both? Neither? It's hard to say, and I won't really know for sure until the moment of truth.
No more word one way or the other on the job-front. The most recent targets are a sales job in a shoe store or a sort of high-tech vending machine repair gig. I'll leave you with a little bit of related trivia: The sliding thing that shoe salespeople use to measure your foot is called a Brannock device. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I've been making progress on my writing project in leaps and bounds just lately. I managed about 3800 words over the course of yesterday and the day before, bringing me up past 12000 words, probably the single longest piece of fiction I've ever written on my own. There's something kind of odd about my work pattern, though. Even though I think about the story a great deal and do fair bit of research on it at home, I only ever get any real writing done at Starbucks. Weird, huh? Well, it fits in pretty well with a bit of ancient Greco-Roman worldview, so I thought I'd take time to mention that.
In the Greco-Roman setting that I'm speaking of, the idea of a person being talented in and of themselves didn't exist. Artists and writers and such were working to channel semi-divine beings. On the Greek side of the coin they were called daemons, but for the Romans they were geniuses. Sometimes the daemon/genius would follow someone around for a while, but for the most part they just hung out in particular spots, waiting for the right vessel to come along and hold their inspiration. Apparently my head is the right shape to funnel inspiration out of daemons who love the smell of coffee.
Just a little thought to take with you to your favorite writing/drawing/painting/sculpting/whatever spot. Tell the genius I said "Hi". | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Research | | Time: | 09:40 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/charitycam/goth_boy/happy.gif) amused |
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| Research,
I love you but you've eaten most of my day without telling me what I needed to know. I'll grant you that you've kept me entertained, but you've done it by keeping me distracted. If I'm going to keep writing in my after-the-bomb wasteland, I need info on hydroponics, radiation, and subterranean living. The history of glassblowing and details on charcoal manufacturing are interesting, but more suitable to projects in a less post-modern setting.
I hope we can still be friends.
Love,
Coyote | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, I didn't get the job that I mentioned interviewing for, last post. I'm almost glad. Many bad vibes, plus a long, long drive to get the training. Driving would not qualify as one of my favorite things. Still, it means that the hunt goes on.
I'm a little curious about the one that got away, though. They took two months to even get back to me for an interview, and dismissed me as a possibility in about a day. The question is, why? I didn't interview all that badly. I'm reasonably qualified. Intimidation, maybe? I've lost a fair number of jobs by seeming brighter and more qualified than the person doing the interview. I wish I knew that was the reason for sure, though. It'd be a good reinforcement for my wavering confidence. And if that's not the reason, what could I have done better?
Hunting hasn't been too good lately. Hopefully one of the places I've applied at will show some interest, because there aren't many jobs being advertised at the moment. One of the things about job-hunting is that it makes you look beyond what you currently are and examine what you could be. On the one hand self-knowledge is valuable, but soul-searching isn't a hobby for the faint of heart.
One place where life is advancing is in a writing project, of all things. I don't really identify myself as a writer, but this has been interesting. I've added a couple thousand words over the last couple days, and stayed up later than I'd meant to last night doing research. I now know a bit more about radio-isotopes, radiation resistant plants, weapons of mass destruction, radiation poisoning, that sort of thing. Some of it turns out to be more complicated than I'd thought. Apparently a fourth variety of radiation has been added to the alpha particles, beta particles, and gamma rays that I learned about in school. Neutron radiation has joined the stage. I don't care to think what my search profile would make people think about me, though. The profile is only going to get worse, too. The setting for my story is a couple centuries in the future, after a large-scale ABC war. Bio-accumulative toxins and virology, here I come!
Mosquito bites on my back... Itchy.
Monotony, thine name is laundry-day.
There were a couple Sheriff's cars parked out front for a while today. I wonder what was going on? I talked briefly with the neighbor, but nothing seemed to be unusual. I didn't specifically ask about it, though. I'll have to try to catch the news of record tomorrow. Or I could just wait ten minutes and ask the roomie's mother, I guess.
My but it's warm out today. About 100 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course) in the shade. That's about 38 degrees Celsius for the folks outside the USA. No wonder the plants were drooping before I watered them. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Well, the interview that I mentioned has come and gone. I went with business casual, and it was the better choice. I was still better dressed than my interviewer. It was a brief first interviewlet, a little over ten minutes. I didn't acquit myself too badly, although I didn't sparkle greatly either. I'll hear one way or another in about a week, I'm told. I've got a hinky feeling about the company, overall. If I weren't so work-hungry I'd be hoping that I don't get it. The coyote-sense is tingling, and not in a good way. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Interview. | | Time: | 08:07 pm | | Current Mood: | excited |
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| Well, I'm off to my second interview since having bailed out of the morally corrosive mentally numbing former job. I was a little surprised to get the call, since it's been over two months since I applied for it. I guess the gears grind slowly there. It's not really a business I'm 100% thrilled, with, payroll cash advances. Kind of a vulture industry, but at least they're a new flock of vultures, not the same old bone-pickers. On the plus side, it seems like a recession-proof industry. At this point I'll take what I can get to be earning again. Watching the savings slowly eroding has been bad for my mental health, although less so than the previous job. Wish me luck. I need it.
The real question: Go full-on suit and tie or business casual? It's always a tough call. Being under-dressed is bad, but outshining the interviewer has been known to be worse. I especially worry about that balance, because I suspect that my track record has intimidated some of the managers involved into not giving me so much as a call-back. That in mind, I'm leaning toward business casual.
Tension about the interview is mild now, but I'll really be twanging with it tomorrow afternoon. With luck I'll be able to pass it off as enthusiasm. Wish me luck. It's only my future, no pressure. ;) | | comments: Leave a comment |
| Well, still no job. There's only really been a couple points where I've even had a prospect to get excited about. Life goes on, though. The latest couple have been with a video-rental chain and a bank. Neither one is something that I feel particularly drawn to, but I really do need something and I'm willing to be pretty flexible to avoid swallowing my pride and returning to America's favorite retailer.
On the upside, I don't count all the time as a complete waste. I've picked up more computer programming than I was ever able to manage before. I feel healthier, despite having pretty much dropped my workout routine. I'm no longer in a permanent downswing, although depression and feelings of worthlessness occasionally well up. That would be life in action.
It occurs to me that this account doesn't really get much attention. Maybe I should adopt Twitter and LoudTwitter to keep it up, like the roomie has. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| I'm a ham. No, really. I finally went ahead and got my amateur radio license a couple days ago. I'm now Coyote the Technician-class ham.
I ended up taking a few people aback while I was being tested. Apparently the local radio club has been giving classes to prepare for the exams just lately. So, the fact that I swept in out of nowhere, a brand new face, and passed in about half the time that was expected drew a little comment. Since I'd passed Technician already and it wouldn't cost any extra, I went ahead and tested for the next license up, General. I missed passing by four, but then I hadn't reviewed the material at all, so that's not too bad. If the test had slanted toward electrical/antenna design questions I'd have made it, but it was a little heavier on FCC rules than I could deal with. Maybe next time.
I don't actually have any radio equipment, so until I see some positive cash-flow this is just résumé padding. The exams only happen every few months, though, so I figured it was worth a shot. Apparently I was right.
Still no job. I'm waiting to hear back on whether I got a job as theatrical lighting assistant. Two days remain out of the seven since the second interview. This is the first job that I've come across that will truly wound me if I don't get it, so everyone cross your fingers. I'll take all the help I can get. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Sometimes the internet amazes me. Sometimes I amaze myself. Both experiences came together as I put in some work on my sister's ailing laptop.
The sister's diagnosis was a failing hard-drive. It's not a bad choice of failure point, so I ran with that at first. Turns out not to be the case, though. What wasn't mentioned to me was the machines tendency to just shut down without any warning or apparent reason. It did that to me for the first time about an hour into running chkdsk on the miserable piece of crap. It was at 93% of the final test. *sigh*
The Windows install was trashed. Each time it booted it complained that a file was missing or corrupt. Each time I replaced said file, it would move onto a new file. I rebuilt the boot.ini file. Eventually it said that ntfs.sys either wasn't there or wasn't working. I replaced it, but got the same thing again. Okay, looks like XP needs a reinstall. But first, must back-up critical information.
Backing up sounds easy in this instance, but turned out to be a little tricky. There was about 30 Gb of info to preserve, a decidedly non-trivial amount, especially in the absence of a working OS. In the end I had to chain together an IDE-to-USB adapter kit I bought for another project and a 2.5-to-3.5 hard-drive kit, hooking the rat's nest of wiring up to my laptop to dump the info somewhere else before formatting Patti's drive. At USB speeds it took a couple hours. I spent that time with Agatha Christie and let the conjoined computers get on with things.
Next hurdle; How do you install Windows on a machine that might reboot at any time? I thought at first that the reboots were probably the result of an overheating issue, but putting a block of blue ice next to the intake proved me wrong. After quite a while I noticed that it never rebooted while it was in my lap, though. Not, that is, until I raised my left leg higher than the right. Then all bets were off. So the hour+ while Windows got comfy on the hard-drive passed with my book sitting on top of the (tilted) keyboard. This is where I started to feel confident of impending victory.
No such luck. Windows couldn't find drivers for some fairly important stuff. How important, you ask? Just the video card, sound card, modem, and wifi. Oh, and also something called "unknown device." Searching for drivers when even Microsoft just shrugs is a little dispiriting.
Normally at this point I'd just hop over to the manufacturer's website and look up the hardware. That approach has served me well when working on IBMs, Compaqs, HPs, etc. My sister's laptop was made by a company called "Enpower Innovates". If you've never heard of them, don't feel alone. When I finally found their website the banner at the bottom let me know that the domain was available if I wanted it. *sigh revisited* More general searching turned up a few sites that promised me that they had the drivers I needed and would be happy to tell me more about them as soon as I gave them $30. *Growl*
Needless to say, I didn't decide to pay. I took a flier on the notion that the devices might all be integrated in the motherboard. Not bad odds, in a laptop. So off I went in search of a driver bundle for a Compal CL50 motherboard. No, that's not a typo. Compal. The first place I found that claimed to have them gave me something to download. Since everything else had gone so smoothly, I was suspicious. I virus-scanned the file, but it came up clean. Then I ran it. Blue Screen. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. It restarted alright though, so at least nothing was broken. The next place actually had the drivers. Turns out that the "unknown device" was an SD card slot hidden under the PCMCIA slot. So now the damn thing actually works, at least until you set it on a level surface for too long. Microsoft refuses to process the activation through the internet, but if it has to be done by phone it's not going to be me who does it.
The moral of the story? Yes, the internet has everything. Don't count on it being easy to find, well-labeled, or even accurate, though. Amazing doesn't always mean convenient or even nice. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
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