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A lot has happened lately with my computers. The hard drive from the file server is confirmed dead. Whatever data is on that drive is gone. There is no way to recover it without shelling out some serious money.

On another note I’ve been having problems with my desktop computer. It was becoming more and more unstable. I figured it was a Windows problem, and on a machine running Windows that’s a safe bet.

I would have lost that bet. It turns out my video card is in process of dieing. I did a full format reinstall to see if it would fix the unstable nature of the box, and at first it seemed to. I rebooted early this morning and it would not boot back up. It would lock up when Windows tried to load the video drivers. I tried several times before going into safe mode. While in safe mode I uninstalled my video card drivers and it rebooted normally. I then went and downloaded the latest video drivers from NVIDIA and installed them. After rebooting I tried to change my resolution and it locked up. Ever time I try anything other than 800×600 it locks up. It seems that I will now be useing a very small resolution for a while.

This really sucks because I am saving for a motorcycle. I have money for that, but not to repair a computer. I hate to buy a new video card for this computer. It’s still an AGP, and I can’t find anything worth buying to go in an AGP slot. It looks like I’m being pushed into upgrading my computer sooner than I wanted to.

Computer

It seems that the Raid card was dead. The primary channel quit on me and I had to order a new card. I got the new card and installed it today. My trouble shooting led me to believe this because I lost both the Primary Master and the Primary Slave drives at the same time. Of a four drive raid I thought in unlikely that I would lose two drives at the same time. I was right.

After installing the new card I don’t get the error message that tells me both drives on the primary channel are not responding. Now it’s just the primary master. So I end up right back where I started. I have one non functional raid because I lost one drive. It looks ever more unlikely that I will be able to save my data. If I can’t get that drive to work I can’t even make an image of it to try to unstripe the raid. I doubt there is anything I can do personally to recover my stuff. There are data recovery centers that can open the hard drive and remove the platters to recover the data, but that is very expensive. As much as I hate to lose all of my pictures I’ve taken, I can’t justify spending $1000 or more to recover them.

Computer

This afternoon after work I went to the Rutherford County Sherrifs Office out on Highway 99. The county hosted a huge fair to remember the people that were killed so tragically on September 11, 2001. There was a huge turn out. I would guess the crowd to be in the two to three thousand person range. There were displays from just about every kind of emergency response, law enforcement, and military branch you can think of. They had everything from a helicopter from the Medivac people to a boom truck and backhoe from the electric company. I saw Jesse Cunningham there. He was with the electric company. He hasn’t changed a bit.

They even had a celebrity guest. Some, but not many, of my readers may know who this is. They had Trace Adkins there. He’s a country artist. While I do listen to a little country I would not clasify myself as a Trace Adkins fan. I’ve heard his music on the radio, but I couldn’t tell you what his hit records are, or much of anything else about him. I arrived at the event a little early. I went into the Sherrifs Office to use the mens room to change into my uniform. When I walked out into the front lobby of the Sherrifs Office there was a very tall man with long hair and a hat standing there. He saw me come out and proceeded to do a very bad Karate Kid impression complete with the Bruce Lee noises. I guess he thought it was funny, I might have laughed in sympathy. I shook his hand and said that it was nice to meet him, then I made my way out to the demonstration we were about to do.

I can add him to the very short list of celebrities I have met personally. About seven years ago I met Vince Gill and Amy Grant at the The Vinny Golf Tournament, and about five years ago I saw an event at a Wal-Mart parking lot where Billy Gilman was doing a promotion for his first album One Voice. I got an autographed cd out of it. It may be a short list, but it just grew by 25% today. That’s not too bad.

Personal, Taekwondo

Since my file server is on the fritz and I don’t know if I’ll ever see my data again I’ve been looking for backup software. I think I’ve finally found what I’m looking for. I found a little program called Handy Backup. It has some very cool featues. I plan to purchase a fairly large spindle of dual layer DVD-RW discs that I will use for my backup. This software will take everything on the drive, compress it as it burns it to disc, and it supports disc spanning. It can put the data across however many DVD discs it requires to store all of the data.

I also found DriveImage XML. This is a free download that I plan on useing for a very specific purpose. My computer seems to be a little unstable here lately, so I want to format to get it back. Once I get it set up the way I like, I can use DriveImage to clone the hard drive. Then I can simply restore from that clone image that already has all of the drivers and updates and whatever else already installed. It should even have all of my personal settings set right.

So my new backup strategy is to clone my desktop drive to the file server with DriveImage, then back it all up with Handy Backup. That way everything I have is on at least two forms of storage. Some of it will be on three.

Personal

I’ve had an interesting track record with Taekwondo. I tend to work out faithfully for a year or two, take a break for a year or two, work out for a year or two, take a break for a year or two, and so on. Of the ten years I’ve been studying martial arts I think I’ve been active in the school for six. I don’t think that’s a very good track record, but on the other hand, of all the people that were students when I started, I am the only one that remains. I think I’ve watched over a thousand people start, reach various differant belt levels up to black belt, and quit or move away. There is not one single person going to the school, other than Mr. Whiltlow, that was a student when I started ten years ago.

I say all that just to point out that I’m starting to go back to class again. I’ve got my eye on 3rd Degree Black Belt. If I just look at how long it’s been since I tested I will be able to test again in about six months or so. Personally I don’t think I’ll be ready by then. I’ve been out too long. If I start going back, I bet I could be ready to test in a year from now. I will need to really work at getting back to the physical condition I was this time last year.

On that note I’m off to class. Wish me luck, and kick my butt if I stop going again.

Taekwondo

I finally sold my snake. While I am happy that he is going with a new family that will take good care of him, I will miss having him. Last night was weird bacause I didn’t have the weird red glow of the heat lamp in my room. It was a lot darker than normal. I guess it’s not all bad. He’s off to a better home, and I don’t have to feel guilty about not having the time to properly take care of him.

Personal

I got home today and went to work on a project for church. I needed to install a piece of software that I had on my file server. For some reason when I got home my computer was not running. I always leave it running, so I thought it odd and pushed the power button to start it up. I then reached under the desk and checked to see if the file server was running. It was not so I got it started booting up as well.

I went and checked my email and stuff. A few minutes later I went to access the file server and it was not available over the network. I flipped the switch on my monitor to switch over to the server and grabed its keyboard. When it came up I had an error message from the raid controller card. It said that two of the drives had failed and it could not boot. It seemed that both the primary master and primary slave drives were not responding.

I moved the power cables around and it had no effect. I changed out the IDE cable and had no effect. I moved the raid card to a differant PCI slot and had no effect. Every time I changed anything the promary master and slave drives don’t work. I don’t know, but I think the primary channel on my raid card is gone. If that’s the case I might be able to retrieve the data. I just have to get a new controller card of the exact same type and hope. It’s a Highpoint RocketRaid 133. I found one at ZipZoomFly.com for $72.

If it turns out the drives are dead I’m sunk. I have a huge amount of pictures I’ve taken with my camera over the past few months. You can bet that I will burn every last bit of them to disk if I get them back.

EDIT: After talking to the guy at AZZO I feel pretty confident that my controller is gone. I just ordered a new one from ZipZoomFly.com. When it arrives I hope that it will be able to use the existing raid structure. I don’t know how it will react to a raid that has already been built. I guess I’ll find out when I get it. I can’t find anything online to suggest if it will work or not.

Computer

Last night I went to the Taekwondo school to watch some of the kids I taught test for the new belts. I got a call from one of the mothers to let me know that one of the little girls I taught was going for 1st Degree Black Belt. There is no way I could have missed that. It was awesome to watch her. She did a fantastic job and earned her black belt at seven years old.

On the same night her brother tested for, and got, his 2nd Degree Black Belt. It is a great accomplishment to get your 2nd degree, but he did it at the age of eleven. Not many people who start taking Taekwondo reach 2nd degree. One out of ten get to black belt. Of those who make it to black belt only one out of ten get to 2nd degree. I’ve only seen two kids ever get 2nd degree by eleven years old.

This is an amazing family. There are six of them, all in Taekwondo, and only two are not black belts. One is four and the other is five.

Great job Emeline and Grayson.

Taekwondo