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Shit ATHF Happens!

I try not to let this page turn into a political forum, so I try not to discuss things that bring up politics too often here. In the case of the “Boston Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hoax Devices” however I feel that I must bend my rule and point out something absolutely ridiculous.

I think that no matter where you are in this country you have probably heard about the “Hoax Devices” found scattered throughout Boston. Many people are bursting brain cells trying to figure out who to blame. Who do we blame!?! Who will pay for this?!?! Well folks, the more and more I think about this situation, the more I deduce that this event really shows my political feelings/stance. Sometimes things, aren’t just black and white, hot and cold, liberal or conservative. Sometimes, things can’t just be put in one bin or another. In the world we live in we are but one small part of so many, many other parts. Sometimes we are bound to see something or some event we have never seen before. You can look back at this guerrilla marketing attempt and say what you will about it. You can say they should have known better, they should have warned people, they must have expected this reaction, or so many other things. However, the truth is, who knew what to expect, something like this has never happened before. The only thing I know for certain here is that “shit happens!” To this many people might say but what if someone had died? Well to that person I would ask if they knew how many people died making the Panama Canal, or how many people died during the construction of the Hoover damn. These are both things of value of great value that didn’t come with out great sacrifice. I can’t possibly understand giving away my freedoms and living in fear of something so simple as a Lite-brite giving me the finger.

I guess I would make a bad judge in the eyes of the public, because I think that in regard to this unprecedented event, I probably wouldn’t punish anyone. Instead , I would commend the response that was made. I certainly wouldn’t be happy that all this happened, but I would absolutely take the opportunity to point out some of the problems that this sort of thing did create. I just don’t think that I would, or could punish any of the involved people, because I see absolutely no intentions of malice from anyone who ever had anything to do with this.

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ToDowntime

The coolest thing happened yesterday. I had to get an oil change, and recently I have been in the position that I can not be without my car for the day. Since I get free oil changes where I bought the car, [Webber Dodge] I had to bring it there. I decided that I would get the oil change while I waited, but this meant that I had to sit and wait in the boring waiting room. Now here is where a little tip I read online came in oh so handy. I had read an article about “downtime.” In this article it was recommended that you make a list of things that you could do when presented with a little downtime. This includes things such as making that phone call you’ve been putting off, deleting those old contacts out of your cellphone that you haven’t spoken to in years & many other things (many of which made significantly easier having a Treo with Internet access.) In my case I decided that since I also had my camera with me I would take it out and repeatedly view the video that my friend had taken of me snowboarding. No I wasn’t being narcissistic, I have this thing that I “supposedly” do with my shoulders while making a turn. Well, after sitting and watching this video over and over, I finally found it, and even started to think of what I could do to eliminate it.

I can honestly say that without finding this free time while I sat there waiting for my car, I would have just continued to push this off more and more. Being forced to sit around in this case however helped me to finally accomplish a task that always seems to sit too low on the list to get accomplished, even though I have been wanting to get to it for a very long time. So that’s it, I strongly recommend taking that little note program in your cell phone and writing yourself a list of things you could accomplish the next time you find yourself waiting for that oil change or your doctor’s appointment that never seems to be when you appointment is actually scheduled.

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Greed..

Greed, say it out loud. GREED. It kind of sounds funny. It’s almost a taboo word in our culture. Why? I guess because we all are somewhat greedy in the United States. It’s ok, I don’t blame you, the average citizen. It’s large companies that portray materialism as happiness. One company that I have really seen as stepping up to the plate and hitting a real “Greed-Slam” is Apple. Today I am going to talk about them a little bit.

Apple is really no different then most tech companies. In our culture we crave the latest and greatest technology. I’m no exception (*brief pause to check this incoming email on my Treo 700w.*) The thing that I feel really separates Apple from the the rest of the pack however is how they like to keep their new products a complete secret until the day they release. I could go out today and buy a new iPod and tomorrow it could be yesterday’s big thing, and I consider myself somewhat on the pulse of new technology.

The thing which really possessed me to make this post however was this. Last night, while trying to set up my girlfriend’s new iPod, I ran into the following string of events:

-When Trying to hook up her iPod nano, I was told to update to iTunes 7.0.2.
-After downloading iTunes 7.0.2, I was told it couldn’t be installed without upgrading to mac OS x 10.3.9
-After downloading 10.3.9 I was told that I could not update unless I upgraded OS X from 10.2.8 to 10.3.x

Now, I’ve run into this before, and here’s the issue. Let’s say I bite the bullet and get this upgrade, it is often the case that after upgrading, some other program doesn’t work and you are forced to upgrade that. You find yourself stuck in this spiral, and the biggest spiral is the money spiraling out of your bank account.

So I guess my final thought is this. When it comes to those Apple ads with the 2 guys standing in front of the white wall (a PC guy & a mac guy,) don’t necessarily think that it comes down to good, and bad. Think of it rather as bad and worse, and I am not even going to say which is which.

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My 24 debacle

Fox decided to have a 4 hour premier event for their hit show 24. At face value this seemed like a great idea. I must say though that it was terribly excited because I really enjoy 24. But there were a couple of problems. First off, Fox decided to put the premier of 24 up against playoff football, and to start it an hour earlier then usual. Since the show was also being aired on a Sunday (during a holiday weekend) my schedule was different, and I was not home to catch it. No problem, it’s 2007, and if you are enough into a show into a show that you can’t miss an episode, there are a few options open to you. You either watch the episode with commercials on the fox website, or download it from iTunes (usually for around $3.) When I returned from New Hampshire, I had every intention of buying & downloading the first 2 episodes I had missed from iTunes. But leave it to Fox to try and get more money out of it’s viewers. Fox had decided to sell the first 4 episodes on DVD starting the day after the premier event. Because of this the episodes weren’t available anywhere on theInternet (legally anyways.) Sure there were plenty of opportunities to download this episode from other fans who record it and are sharing it online with other fans, but this starts to enter into a bit of an ethical/legal debacle.

I guess my big issue is that Fox’s greed to make a few more dollars by selling a DVD of the first 4 episodes forces a fan who wanted to catch the 2nd night’s 2 episodes, to either download the episodes illegally, or to read an online synopsis of the content they missed. Since the whole concept of 24 is time, you CAN’T miss an hour, and this was a major oversight. I guess it’s not such a big deal, because it will all probably become available on iTunes in a few days, but I definitely feel like I was/am being taken for a ride on this one.

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WiFi & Nerdness

So I am sitting at Panera Bread killing time. I was surfing around the web and doing nothing of too much importance, when I realized the perfect thing to do. I thought; I should post to my blog. I haven’t in a while and its so the type of thing to do while sitting in a coffee shop surfing the web. It’s definitly the Web 2.0 thing to do.
I don’t really have too much to post about. I have been keeping super busy but not doing much of too much importance. Most recently I have decided what snowboard equipment I am getting, and decided exactly what my battle plan is going to be in terms of this seasons ski season. I have decided to work at Cannon again, (a decision that didn’t come easily,) & also do a night a week at Blue Hills. I think this is a good thing because I need to try and get excited about skiing again. Last season I wasn’t, and it usually is my favorite thing to do. I am hoping that the people at Blue Hills can help bring back some of the excitement I had lost.
I guess the other thing I have been doing is really trying to refine some of my work that I do in freelance video I do. In fact, I’m off to a meeting of the NPVA now. That said, it’s time to go.

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The New Computer Smart-Start

So all you laptop people who stuck around even though that last post really didn’t apply to you, well now is when I will speak to you as well. In my previous post I ended up calling the procedure we performed an “emergency backup”. Just as with all things in life we should really try and avoid these emergencies, and “It is always good to be prepared for an emergency.” That said; here are some simple things we can do to stay ahead of the game, and be prepared for that dreaded day we hope never comes.

I am going to start from right out of the box, fresh install. Personally I like to keep a record of all the things I install, at least when I just start out. Use notepad and make a text file right on the desktop. Doing this when installing new programs allows us to see what changes were made at the time of the issue. Once we know what might have caused a problem to occur we can uninstall that program or otherwise address the issue. It is also important to install things carefully, and in a smart order. Decide what programs you like, write them down on paper or in a text file. Once you have created a list, put the items into order. My list usually includes; utilities, (such as virus scanners, spyware/adware scanners, and other tools like this) internet tools, (browsers, Instant messaging programs) handy windows tools (sticky notes, hot corners, etc.) Office programs, Overlookables, (winzip, flash, java) & any other programs you feel are really important.

The most important item you will install, I left off the list, because it is last on the list. This is a program so important that it gets its own paragraph. You NEED to have a backup (ghosting) program. There a ton out there and I won’t endorse any particular one. Search for one you like and make a backup after you get your list of programs that you like in your work space installed. Keep your install log on your desktop and include it in your backup. Make you back up to DVD(s) It shouldn’t be any more then 4 discs which isn’t bad because 4$ will save a lot of headaches. After you have created these discs, you have created your own “personal restore discs.” They will bring your computer back to what you would want it to be like out of the box. You will save your self a lot of space if you backup your data early, and try and keep your “my documents” folder as small as possible until after this back up.

Once your backup is done go ahead and fill up your “my documents” folder. Do what you want with installing other programs. Now is also a good time to set up automatic backups or schedule a time to make a back up of you system for the future. You know how often you use your computer, so you know how frequent to make these back ups. Generally you will only be referring to the “personal restore discs” if you need to recover from a situation like I mentioned above.

Now, since you have that handy external hard drive I mentioned in my last post, think about using it for a place to store you back ups. Your back up program can write to this drive. I also like to make a weekly back up of “my documents” to this drive as well. Some back up programs allow you to navigate through a backup file and pick out files. Mine does, but I like to make a back up of this myself, for a couple reasons. One, I don’t trust the back up, and two, I like having all of my documents available at work or on any other computer.

So that’s it. I hope that these two posts have helped you prepare for a situation that could be really really bad. It is great to be prepared for this, because it gives you more freedom to experiment with your computer, knowing that you have something to fall back on

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The “Emergency Backup”

Imagine this, you turn on your computer and let it start booting.It’s going through its standard boot order finding all of its components and reading the startup information off the hard drives.All of a sudden you hear a beep, and the process starts over from the beginning.You’re stuck outside your operating system.All of your precious documents and settings are still inside the operating system, and you can’t get in, (that’s if they also haven’t been destroyed.) So what could we have done to make this situation hurt less?

This is the exact situation I found myself in after trying to make a simple upgrade.Suddenly I found myself replacing the motherboard.I wont get into the specifics, as they are available a few posts back.But long story short, with my new hardware, suddenly my computer realized it had a boot sector virus.

Today I am going to tell you a few things that can help you survive when this does happen, and more importantly in part two of this post I am going to tell you what measures you can take to protect yourself.

[Before I get too deep into explaining this I should point out that I am speaking in terms of desktops here, this project gets a lot harder if doing all of this using laptops, it it definitely voids any warranty. So do any of this at your own risk.]

Luckily we live today in a world of portable storage.Pretty much everyone has one of those little thumb drives (jump drives etc.)They are a great way to move files quickly and easily between locations.What I would recommend for this project however is to go out and get an external hard drive at least 40 gigabits, but you know what size to get, it should be at least the size of all the documents on your computer.These are available at most electronics retailers; I recently got one at BestBuy.Over the next few days of recovering your files this is going to be your vessel that you hold them in.The main reason that we have so much portable storage brings me to my next point.We also live in a world where a lot of households have more then one computer.You’re going to need to use one of these other computers as well.

Once you have all of these parts together you can start recovering your data.Take your hard drive and put it into the working machine (computer 2) Make sure you make the necessary changes to the hard drive so the computer 2 will recognize the new drive as a slave and not the master.Once this drive is in computer 2, boot up computer 2.Once the computer is done booting you can attach the external hard drive.Once computer 2 sees both of these new drives your are ready to begin.

If you go into “my computer” you will see all of the computers drives listed there.Open you computer’s (computer 1’s) original drive and drag that window to one side of the screen.Next open my computer again, but this time open the external hard drive, and drag that window to the other side of the screen

Now you can start to copy the files right from your hard drive to the external hard drive until your original hard drive is ready to work again.Be selective. Now is probably a good time start weeding out some of the junk you will not need.A good place to start with this process is the “documents and settings folder” this will probably have most of your documents inside it.Often time files you want to keep do end up elsewhere on your hard drive (i.e. file sharing directories.)These are usually somewhere else on the drive usually right of the base level “C:whatever”.Remember that your drive is no longer C: though, as long as your drive is in computer 2 is will be something else, this could be any other letter.

Once your files have been copied, you can take a breath.You have just performed an emergency backup.You are now free to make any changes to your computer that you need to make.

In my next post I will explain how we could have been better prepared for this situation.

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Getting back in the swing of things

Well I had a big headache with the final mile of the computer restoration project. Specifically the program I use to encode the video you see on this website. It is up and running now, and ther eis a new program posted. Check out “SWAT” in the work section. It’s a piece I shot last month about the special weapons and tactics training program, held throughout the metro Boston area.

I do still have 3 programs to install before I am totally done with my big project, but it should all be smooth sailing from here. Count on my promised post regarding protecting yourself from that computer catastrophe by the end of this week.

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