jimsjournal
I'm back! -- 07/05/07


I'm back!

I finally got my PC back on Tuesday afternoon. (For those of you not on the e-mail notify list, my personal computer decided to refuse to boot up and, after poking around a bit and trying this and that, I gave up and took it into Blue Moon, a local computer repair shop.)

Although it is far from being the only computer in my office (as you can see in some of the photos below), the others are not my personal machines, they are my work machines and belong to that big computer company that employs me. Nancy and Jeremy and Jill all have computers and I suppose I could have borrowed some time on their machines to do an entry, but my machine was set up with the files and software I use to cobble these entries together and install them on my site. Thus, a couple of weeks without updates...

The problem was not, as I had feared, due to my hard drive -- it was apparently due to a corrupted boot partition. Blue Moon did more than just repair that boot partition, they repaired a large number of registry errors, removed some adware and malware (but found no viruses), updated the BIOS to the latest version, and also cleaned things up physically (it's amazing how much dust and crud can accumulate inside a computer) and added more thermal paste to the heatsink.

And then, having retrieved my machine at lunchtime on Tuesday, I didn't even have time to connect it up and turn it on until Wednesday. Tuesday morning I had received a phone call asking if either Nancy or I could fill-in for an attendant at Kinney Bungalow for a wedding that night. Nancy had a tennis match but that left me free, so as soon as I finished work I had to change into a suit (from my normal work-at-home garb of shorts and t-shirt) and spend seven hours or so standing around looking helpful.

This entry had originally been intended as a 4th of July entry. I was going to start with the above picture (even though it had been taken a few days earlier) and then follow it with some shots of the fireworks -- but as the day went on the sky grew increasingly overcast and around four o'clock it began to rain -- not heavy rain, just light rain but it didn't stop, just kept raining. About five-thirty I drove by the park where the celebration was to be held and, despite the rain, there was a crowd gathered and music was playing. By eight o'clock, however, the rain was still falling and Nancy and I decided to stay home, guessing that the fireworks would be cancelled and rescheduled due to the weather, so we settled down to watch a movie on HBO instead. We had settled in and were enjoying the movie when suddenly the TV went off -- and the lights went off. Looking outside we could see that the entire neighborhood had gone dark. So we lit some candles. About that time we heard the fireworks -- but they were more than two miles away (straight line distance, more like three miles by roads) and the trees here are too tall so we couldn't see anything. We went to bed about eleven -- still with no power. I woke up briefly around four a.m. and saw that the dial was lit on my alarm clock but I don't know what time the power was actually restored. (Also have no idea what happened, but my guess is that somebody crashed into a utility pole.)

I was surprised that they held the fireworks in the rain, but I guess they made that decision because the rain date was tonight and the weather forecast for today was much worse than for yesterday, with yesterday being 40% chance of light showers and today being 90% chance of rain, including thunderstorms. (Heh! Naturally, thus far today, although the sky is overcast, it isn't raining.)
So, instead of pictures of a fireworks display, here are some shots of my den/office. Now that the corporate office where I called a cubicle my own (despite working from home all except a couple of days a month) has closed and I am officially in work-from-home status, I have had to add more equipment to my home office -- especially that big Canon laser printer you see at the intersection of my desk and work table in the above picture. This required a lot of time in moving things about to try to find room for everything. The work table holds the printer plus the monitors and keyboards (and mice, etc.) for my personal computer and for a work computer (two "desktop" computers that sit on the floor under the table -- except that when I took this shot my computer was still in the repair shop). The keyboard & mouse & flatpanel monitor on my desk connect to a ThinkPad laptop that is parked in a docking station that sits on a low platform that is also under the table.
Of course to make room for the laser printer on the table I had to move my flatbed scanner and my HP inkjet printer to my desk (which is why the laptop/docking station had to go beneath the table).
One short-coming is that I have to lug that green bookcase (lower left corner of photo) out of the way to open the paper tray of the laser printer, but it holds at least five hundred sheets of paper and it can print on both sides, so it's not as if I would have to do that every day.. (And, Charlie, as you can see, the futon is still there and there is still room for it to open up.)




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