Anxiety!

Over at the one stop to prepare for my possible upcoming interview and I would be lying if I said I didn't have huge amounts of anxiety over it.

Diagnosis of the L866R

I finally got this thing to work better in spite of the issues with
Windows ME.

After finally getting HijackThis to do what it does well, I eventually
got USB Thumbdrive support copied from a FLOPPY (heh!) onto the
harddrive and now my Lexar drives work with WinME. My favorite go-to
tool doesn't work on M.E., but Spybot does! So I had it go do what it
does well. It found 809 items to remove. The system works much much
better now. I still want to get an anti-virus scan done.

Windows ME has some issues. I don't think this system has had any
updates before Microsoft dropped support. It doesn't seem to recognize
DVDs larger than 1.99G or that a DVD has more than that on it even if it
does end up accessing it. The taskbar also locks up so program tabs
don't disappear when you close them and then you also can't use the
Start menu. I see there were fixes Microsoft issued, but I'll have to
use one group's unofficial service pack to address these problems, among
others.

However, these all become moot if I can get Windows XP to go in and take
charge. That means replacing the optical drive with either a DVD burner
(kinda overkill) or a DVD-CD burner combo drive, which would be more
appropriate. It would do me no good to end up with a drive that won't
recognize disks made by DVD Flick, though. Even after the work I did
checking out the unit, the drive won't read anything now.

Second recommendation is taking this system up to its maximum of 512MB
of RAM. One webstore estimates a cost of $30 for this (256x2). This
would enable XP a more suitable environment, even if all it does is play
back video.

I wouldn't mind adding an Ethernet PCI card for it, which may be
superfluous after seeing a Linksys wireless module on one computer a
week ago. Depends on which is cheaper.

The monitor that came with it blows. It does a maximum of 800x600. It's
certainly not multi-sync. The graphics controller can do wide screen
display ratios which makes it awesome. One thing that ME does that bugs
me is that it doesn't remember window settings for things like My
Computer - it doesn't remember the size and that I want to display
Details and not a List. I'm always having to reset that.

I also found some protected WMA files on there. What I'm going to find
out is if Daemon Tools Lite works on Windows ME and emulate a CD Burner
drive and put those protected files on a simulated CD image so I can rip
it into unprotected MP3s. I don't know why I'm even bothering because
it's likely music I don't care about. Also found what looks to be left
over AIM files indicating a plethora of AIM screen names the girl who
might have used the system had in their contacts list.

It's got Microsoft Office on there which is super nice. All the more
reason to keep Win ME on there. There are some files I have no idea what
they are so I'll be poking around on the 20G harddrive more.

Oh, and any chance that some deleted pr0n might be lurking is most
likely gone because I defragmented the drive, too.

Up late with a Dell Dimension L866R with WinME on it

I don't know why I stayed up after 2 am last night trying to do stuff with a Dell L866R desktop. Someone gave it to me just because they didn't want it anymore.

It had some stupid toolbars that didn't do any good. My first problem  was that the Samsung SD612 DVD Rom drive wasn't reading CDs. I found out it reads DVDs just fine, but DVD drives are supposed to read CDs, too. After finding out it recognizes burned Data DVDs, I had my other P4 tower burn out a Data DVD with a few tools, but that was a challenge in that I was first using Infrarecorder to do that. I don't know what it
was doing after I added files to the disk project and then it put them  on what it was going to burn, but after it got that far, it would get stuck in preparing what it was going to burn. I don't know what it was  doing. I did a forced shutdown, got it to make an ISO at least, but still InfraRecorder would get stuck in getting ready to burn it. It makes CDs no problem. So I used another piece of software to burn my  InfraRecorder made ISO to an actual DVD which then worked.

I've used InfraRecorder to make a Data DVD before. I wonder if the  problem lies in that I wanted to put a lot less than 1G on the disk. I noticed my other program wrote quite a bit more than the measely amount
I did get onto it. Or that InfraRecorder was not only padding out the  data to be burned, but encoding it, too? I don't know.

But the Samsung drive on the L866R is SLOW. Or that it's just got issues, but either way, that drive will need replaced. The system appears to not have been used for 7 years. I found someone's high school  "Homecoming" pics and some ripped CD tracks. Why do they call it a "Homecoming" rather than just a fall festival?

I finally got something done by copying HijackThis onto a floppy. It let me shut down a bunch of crap and WinME became more responsive again. It's still got issues. I'll need to find the USB drivers for my Lexar
128MB thumbdrive since it appears to act like Win98SE when I plugged  mine in. If I can't get one of my tools to remove junk to run on WinME, I might have to resort to Avast 4 Home.

It has no Ethernet card, which some reports said it's supposed to have. 128MB RAM, and it'll cost me $30 to bring it up to the maximum 512MB. 20G hard drive.

It's not going to do anything important, if at all.

Update: I got USB Thumbdrive support working on it! and I have Spybot S&D finding the bugs since Spybot works with Windows ME. Also set the wallpaper. I think I will now be able to grab the stuff I wanted to grab off it. It might get a Windows ME-tan wallpaper.

Somehow I managed to survive this past year

Last year at this time, I was in the middle of staying up for 3 days
straight due to shock over my mom. I don't know how I managed to survive
but here it is a year later.

I'm still having to untangle her business from online and all. One
company sent an amount to a collection agency claiming she "defaulted"
on some amount and they got told what the others have been told. I think
more of those individual letters will be coming at some point. Her
credit card is taking back the amounts she spent and now these separate
companies will want their money. Too bad, there's nothing.

I'm still in shock. I keep waiting for her to come home. I ask our dog
when mom's coming home. I still say in the morning "Coffee please" like
she would. I ask her what she wants for breakfast, and figure pancakes
or waffles or oatmeal or whatever. I ask her what she wants for supper.
I have her light set on a timer as to when she'd take a nap after
showering and it comes on in the evening when she'd get up to use the
toilet and take medications, and it turns on in the morning when she'd
awake to take her meds then, too.

I still have one more place to call to tell them to remove her from
their list. I have like 8 or 10 letters to write to tell them to stop
sending catalogs. I'm glad the BETUS people finally stopped sending
crap.

I have utilities in my name now. Taking her name off was the hardest
thing I faced. Traces of my mom disappearing from stuff. Her name is
still on a few bills that don't matter though.

I miss taking her to appointments. I worry about the future. I hope I
get some good guidance in setting up my own computer service business.
Trying to get hired as an entry level IT hasn't gone well. The BVR
people I've worked with have been good but even they have limits to what
they can do. (Should I pull back my Ticket to Work thing?) I think it's
due to my resume which lists jobs I've had over the years, and perhaps
the lack of actually working in the field puts off people even though I
am qualified. I'm sorry, but at the time I needed a job, I took what I
could get. Working with computers has been a dream since high school.
It's just that my circumstances and my Asperger's didn't let that happen
as most people would expect. I did some things at various jobs that let
me demonstrate my skills with computers. That should count for
something! My 10.5 years at the restaurant should at least show loyalty
to staying in one place. That's a problem I had with an interview years
ago. The guy who spoke to me then with my sparse resume said he couldn't
see me staying with them for more than 6 months. My friend who
recommended me for the interview said they ended up hiring one guy who
didn't know anything about computers, was studying them in college, and
quit after 3 months.

Having my own business means I can be nice to me. I can work the hours
and days I want. Nobody can fire me. And I have to work on my skills in
dealing with people. At least I don't have to call people up - they'd be
calling me.

I understand computers a lot better. That job at the grocery store was
hell. I want a job working on computers. I do NOT want to go back to
anything with foodservice or retail.

AAARRRGHH Get out of my eye!!!

There's nothing more annoying or aggravating than being woken up because
some particle of something got in my eye and I can't seem to find it
with a Q-tip and eye drops help only a little.

I don't know what it is. Maybe an errant eye lash. or eye booger or
whatever. I can't GET IT OUT! ARRGH! It irritates my eye when closed,
when open, when I blink, or even move it around. I've irritated it and
part of my eyeball turned red - in the sense that it's not bloody, just
irritated.

I wish I had one of those eyewash thingies. I WANT THIS OUT OF MY EYE.
Usually I can get them out right away but this time it's holding on for
its life.

Some up and down

Yesterday I worked for a 2nd time on a lady's Sony Vaio with XP Home
edition on it. What I found out last week is that her hard drive had
developed some bad sectors preventing XP from successfully booting up,
even in Safe Mode. So I diagnosed the problem as corrupt system files,
but after working with it for a while, I also determined that the bad
sectors corrupted some of the drivers needed to make it work. This was
due to having to wait a long time for the re-install of XP Home which
wasn't appearing to go very far.

So I decided to install a 2nd copy. This is when I found yet another
Stupid Install of XP. The hard drive is an 80 Gig Seagate. I guess the
bad sectors developed due to an incorrect shutdown or something, plus
this system sits on shag carpeting. That's a prime target for static
discharge. One of my recommendations was to get it up off the carpet.

Anywho, in the process of installing the 2nd copy, I found that C:
partition was only 16 Gigs, and D: Partition was 60 Gigs!! WHO THE HELL
DOES THAT? Did this come this way from the Sony Vaio dealer? Who was
that? So I installed the 2nd copy on the D: partition. But the problem I
face after that is finding the right drivers for this system. The model
number on the front says one thing, but when I try to get the drivers
off Sony's support website, the ones for Video say they're not made for
this system. The Yamaha sound card driver works just fine though!

So my job now is to find out what this system's got for hardware and try
to find the right drivers. After which, I would like to wipe the hard
drive and erase the partition table and make it a straight 80 Gig drive
once I have that figured out.

The down part is one guy's laptop I worked on earlier this year figuring
out a problem he was having with video files. The inverter circuit for
the backlight failed, and I found a replacement part on a website for a
mere $24. I even sent an email with a link to the precise page for the
part, so all that would need to be done is click on Put in Cart, and
proceed to checkout.

Instead I feel let down in that he couldn't do that for some reason and
instead ended up going to someone else and paying more for the part plus
the service to put it in. I feel I probably should give him what he paid
me for looking at the laptop earlier this year.