Archive for June, 2007
24 items.
First, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has sent e-mails or left comments in support of my computer problems. I’m getting lots of great feedback.
Truthfully, though, I’m having a little trouble sorting out what route to take and I thought it might be helpful if I offer you guys a little more information.
Right now, my desktop has two hard drives. One that is 120GB that houses the operating software and all the other software like Photoshop, Dreamweaver and the like. The second internal hard drive is 20GB, came from my last computer, was wiped clean and now only contains Theater Hopper information. I have a third hard drive that is external and houses all of my MP3s, photos and video. If I ever get this sorted out, I’m going to move all that Theater Hopper stuff over there, too.
I’m starting to wonder if my OS hard drive is starting to crap out on me. My machine is about 3 or 4 years old and I noticed it was making some strained whirring sounds in the last month or so. I’ve had one person advise that I replace the hard drive with Windows XP already installed and then bring over all the old software. This might be a more costly solution, but might be more viable long term if it is the hard drive physically failing.
Anyway, that’s a little more information to go on. I still haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but maybe some of you who have left suggestions can take this information to help me devise a more specific course of action.
Thanks again to everyone!
[ No Comments ]
Sorry, guys. No comic today. I tried salvaging my desktop and it’s been a slog.
Turns out I found my install disks and I called Dell to help walk me through it. The bad news is that it wasn’t registering the prompt to rescue the drive from the CD, so I ended up having to reformat my entire hard drive. It’s formatting as we speak, having taken the last 30 minutes to progress 3%. I’d be surprised if I didn’t have to buy a new hard drive when it was all over.
I can probably use my laptop to complete my work. But right now, I’m too tired to make it work. Henry was sick over the weekend and he hasn’t been quite right since. He used to sleep through the night. Now he’s wide away at 4:00 in the morning. That, coupled with the worry about my machine last night led to practically no sleep. I’m running on fumes.
I might try to update Friday, but we’ll just have to see how it goes.
All I know is that I’m glad I bought an external drive to house all my music, photos and video. I have a second internal hard drive for all the Theater Hopper stuff. So my original art will go untouched. But it’s a close call.
I’m sitting here thinking about how good things were for Theater Hopper last year. The books, the conventions, the success. This year has been a real struggle. I can’t help but think how much worse it could have been if I lost all my original artwork. I probably would have given up completely.
In the meantime, does anyone have suggestions for a reliable internal hard drive that I might set up my operating system on? Does anyone think I need to purchase a OS upgrade? The disks that came with my computer were from 2003. Thoughts?
[ No Comments ]
It may seem a little cheap to do a parody of the “;I’m A Mac…”; tv spots, but when Live Free or Die Hard slaps Justin Long in their movie as the comic sidekick to Bruce Willis, that’s low-hanging fruit too delicious to ignore.
In the commercials, Long represents the slick, hip future of computing to the stodgy, bland PC. Willis’s John McClane character is the analog equivalent to action movies. It makes sense they would try to “;freshen”; him up a little.
From what I’m hearing, thought, LFoDH does a good job with it’s action set pieces in a low-tech way. Not a lot of CGI cartoon physics. They’re doing it old school – which I admire. No one works harder than a stuntman.
I don’t know if there will be room in our schedule this weekend for LFoDH. Cami recently finished reading The Wal-Mart Effect and it inspired her to go back and re-read Fast Food Nation. This has put her in a very specific frame of mind, so I think she’s got her sights set on seeing Sicko this weekend. I kind want to see Ratatouille, but that’s because I’m a socially irresponsible bastard stuck in a state of arrested development. Adorable rodents! Awww!
If you want to get the reaction of someone who saw LFoDH and loved it, check out the most recent Joe Loves Crappy Movies. As Joe puts it, the movie is “;the balls.”; It’s cool to me that he enjoyed it so much. I’m sure we’ll be talking about it on Monday’s Triple Feature.
Speaking of The Triple Feature, I didn’t give you guys the second half of the clue for our Evening contest. So here it is:
“;POWER”;
Be sure to download Monday’s show over at TalkShoe to get the first half of the clue. Take the compiled clue and mail it to me at theaterhopper@hotmail.com along with your name, age and mailing address. One lucky winner will be chosen at random to receive a make-up bag, a cook book and two posters from the movie Evening. Happy hunting!
Switching gears, I just wanted to give everyone a status update on my computer situation.
First, let me thank EVERYONE who left comments in Wednesday blog or e-mailed me personally offering solutions. I wish I had time to thank you all individually, but the outpouring was so strong, that’s not possible. So if you took time out of your busy day to help me diagnose the problem or made yourself available to me through e-mail or by phone – thank you. Each of you went above the call of duty and I appreciate it.
Long story short, I ended up finding the Windows XP installation discs I need to repair my machine. But it turns out my hard drive was physically degraded to the point where it wouldn’t accept it. I contacted Dell customer support to help walk me through things and we tried the repair console first. But it didn’t take, so their recommendation was to do a complete reinstall. That didn’t take, either. So I was forced to buy a new hard drive.
Even though I was keeping all my Theater Hopper stuff on another smaller internal drive (so I think it’s safe) this whole episode has put enough of a scare into me to make sure I have backups of that data in multiple formats. If I ever lost my original artwork, I would probably give up completely. It would be like someone pulled the string out of my back.
That said, we’re not completely out of the woods yet. I had to complete today’s comic using my laptop, but I was running into errors THERE as well. I have a… copy of the Adobe CS2 Suite and for some reason, the version of Photoshop I had on my machine was saying that certain registry information wasn’t matching up. I tried re-installing it, but had no luck. I eventually had to load a… copy of Photoshop 6 I had lying around to get my work done.
This makes me a little nervous about getting the programs I need back on my desktop after I install my new hard drive. So if anyone knows where I might find a… copy of Photoshop CS2 (or, even better, CS3) send me an e-mail and we can chat.
It’s been a long week. That’s about as much as I can say. Everyone enjoy their weekend and I’ll see you here on Monday!
[ No Comments ]
There’s a lot of talk about the new Apple iPhone being released today.
Guess what? I GOT ONE!
It was totally by accident. Cami, Henry and I were wandering through the mall today and our AT&T store had a sign out front that said “Only 14 iPhones left!” I didn’t think much of it because I knew it was too expensive for me to purchase, so we kept walking.
Later, we came home and I got online. I was reading articles about iPhones for sale on eBay with price tags over $1,000!
So I sat at home wringing my hands and debating about whether or not to go back to the store and grab one. I even consulted my LiveJournal friends. With their encouragement, I raced back to the store and bought one. I’m glad I did. I spoke to the manager and he said their location was the only one in Iowa, Minnesota or Nebraska to have any iPhones left in stock.
So, of course, our new iPhone is now on eBay. It’s a three day auction that I started for $650. We’ll ship overnight anywhere in the world, so if you’re interested, bid away! If you have friends who might be interested, let them know, too!
Cami and I are planning to take any profits from the sale and put them toward Henry’s college savings fund. It might not sound very exciting, but we’re trying to be creative. So it’s all going toward a good cause. Good for Henry, anyway. 18 years from now.
THANKS!
[ No Comments ]
