Engine Red Line

Friday I posted very late, actually it didn't go up until Saturday. A long time friend from Tishomingo County brought a laptop by early afternoon. It received a baptism last week sitting on a tail gate when a sudden shower came up. While traveling he'd been using the wifi service at the motel and stepped away for a few minutes. He immediately rushed out and grabbed it. Anyway, it had dried out for two days, but would not read the recovery disk and initialize the hard drive. After using the hard drive out of my Toshiba laptop for test purposes it was determined it might revive with just a new storage device.

During the initial recovery phase with the new drive it decided to power down. This prompted him to return to Best Buy where the hard drive had been purchased and pick up a new Toshiba laptop. He possibly got the "best buy" ever on a laptop and I am still drooling. The "geeks" told him they had to remove their A.R.C.H.I.E. software which contained Deep Freeze and this would take several hours. It was marked down because it was a display unit. After calling the beach house and letting the tech talk to me it was reluctantly released and he returned with the new laptop.

The "geek" said he doubted I could remove the software. Let's see, owned several computers before anyone had even heard of Windows, even know the meaning of Warez, Phrozen, ARPA, DARPA, EFNET, thought DOS Shell 5 was the bomb, learned Linux Mandrake from Ashby Rhett Culpepper in the 90s and so on and so forth. After using Killdisk to zero out the drive the recovery went smoothly and the new laptop was jamming. All the appropriate protection software for Vista Premium was downloaded and put in place then he left late that evening a happy boy with an awesome new computer. After a little research it seems the recovery disks alone would probably have sufficed. Oh yeah, the blessed by water laptop was also back up and running. Toshibas are tough.

Since it was still powering down on its own I spent around 3 more hours doing research and that problem may now be resolved. Anyway this was the prelude to an almost sleepless weekend with several service calls being delayed. It was a pleasure to accomplish all this for a friend I consider a brother and when I turned in around 3:00AM Saturday morning my sleep was not too troubled. Then the fit hit the shan. After coffee and shower tools were being collected to do several service calls and I checked the beach house web server on the way out which is part of the normal departure procedure that includes checking the stove, turning off all lights, making sure the windows are locked, etc. The server was NOT online.

Okay, just went through a half rebuild of this PC a few days ago and now the rest of the weekend has been spent trying desperately to revive the device. It's still not working and yes, I know, there's been whining here about the problem already. Why the lengthy post? Hopefully as I go through the week doing my utmost best to look and act like the bluebird of happiness just flew up my butt and someone sees a tear in my eye they'll forgive me. On top of all this it was discovered a long time friend is a closet democrat. Is the beach house operational mode in a 'woe is me' state? Not hardly. All this too shall pass. I am a blessed man with two beautiful daughters that love me and care about me. Then there's all my great friends GOP, Libertarian, Democrat or whatever. Shucks, my neighbors are the best in the world. All of my clients are super. Yep, peoplewise I know some good folks.

Part of that exit procedure this week will be to make sure my red bandana is in the pocket for obvious reasons. Now the whine engine must be detuned back to impulse mode before it explodes. Prayers are always appreciated. Later y'all.

"Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely."
~Auguste Rodin (He didn't own a computer)