Diary of a Network Geek

Right, so this weekend I upgraded my laptop’s internal hard drive.

My trusty Toshiba Satellite, which I used all through my chemotherapy treatments almost two years ago, came with an 80 GB hard drive and was starting to fill up. All the pictures I take add up, I guess, especially when I shoot in RAW format. So, I decided that with drives being as cheap as they were, it was time for an upgrade. As I wrote Monday, I scooted over to MicroCenter and picked up a 500 GB Seagate 2.5inch, mobile, SATA drive on Saturday. They were on sale for $115, which is, I think, a pretty damn good price. I got a couple other things, too, since the drive upgrade and a previous memory upgrade makes my laptop the most capable machine in my house, outside of the servers upstairs. (Why are so many non-tech people surprised when I mention that I ran cable and have a server room, with servers?) Oh, and before I get too far, let me mention that you can click on any of the pictures here for larger versions if you want a closer look than the thumbnail. Just click back when you’re done admiring my work.

The other essential piece of hardware to start out with is an external USB drive adapter of some kind. I bought the Kingwin EZ-Connect, pictured here. I got that at an earlier trip to MicroCenter, with whom I do NOT have an endorsement deal, by the way. I just love their store. In any case, I got this particular one for two reasons. First, it was under $30. Second, it could handle the three major types of drives that I’m likely to encounter on a regular basis.

What you get in the box, as you can see, is a USB cable, a drive adapter, a power adapter and a power supply. Oh, you also get a small CD that has some drivers, which you don’t actually need if you’re using Windows XP, and some simple backup software. I didn’t actually use this software, but, rather, I went to Seagate’s website and downloaded their free utility called DiskWizard. There were a number of reasons why this made sense for this situation. For one thing, I didn’t want to just back up the drive, but I wanted to make a bit-for-bit mirror copy of the drive so that I can replace the old one and still have a bootable, working computer. For another, I’m familiar with Seagate’s utility and have successfully used it before.

So, after installing DiskWizard following the default prompts, I hooked up my new drive via the USB adapter.

I did install the included software and the drive was immediately recognized. Then, again, I simply followed the DiskWizard prompts with a single false step when I had to go back and change an option in the cloning configuration to make sure the new drive was set to be bootable. I cannot stress that enough! When doing this, you absolutely must make sure that the new drive is being configured to be bootable, system drive. If you don’t do that, your machine will not boot when you change out the drive. If you use DiskWizard, it will require a reboot. In fact, after setting your configuration, the software will prompt you to reboot and, after the software reboots your machine, it will automatically launch and start the cloning process. The actual drive cloning took about an hour or two. I was running around doing other things, so I didn’t get a good time on it. Best just to allow several hours and, like I did, do other things to amuse yourself while you wait.

Now, it’s important to remember to both unplug your laptop and disconnect the battery. Just unplugging won’t be enough to make your laptop safe to work on. As long as that battery is in there, you could suddenly have a jolt of electricity jump through the circuits and make any planned upgrades pretty much useless. Also? A little jolt of juice can bite you pretty hard, especially when you’re not expecting it!

The next step, obviously, is to remove the old drive.

In my case, it was pretty easy. In the past, on some laptops, getting the drive out required taking the whole machine almost totally apart. I’ll never forget having to take a laptop’s entire keyboard off the top of the case to get to drive bay! I had to take the screen off at the hinge and everything! It was a dangerous, delicate mess! But, on today’s laptops, you mostly just have to take off a single panel, as you can see in the picture. The drive was in there really snugly, thanks, in part, to the rubber, anti-vibration sleeves meant to keep the drive quieter in a laptop. What I found interesting, however, is that there were no screws holding the drive itself in. No cages or straps or anything outside of the SATA connections and the tightness of the fit. Because, the drive bay door fit very snugly and I had to apply pressure to get it in place correctly and screwed shut again.

On the right, you can see the drive bay still open with the new, freshly cloned drive in it and the old, small drive laying next to it.

This was actually a pretty simple upgrade to make. It was what I generally refer to as a “one screwdriver job”. By that I mean that I could mainly have done it with the tiny pocket tool I carry with me in my pocket. Though, in this case, I used the old, cheap red-handled screwdriver in the picture. It’s a freebie that is often used as a giveaway by tool companies. I’ve had that one since my first IT job, back when I worked for Hyatt Hotels. It’s a little beat up now, but it can still handle a nice, easy job like this.

As you can see, the formatted drive is a little smaller than advertised. Also, they tend to round up a little and bytes and megabytes and gigabytes aren’t round numbers, so the math gets a little funky. Oh, and there was a special 251Meg partition that couldn’t be clearly identified by DiskWizard, even though it cloned the partition just fine. So, when you factor in all those things, you can see the nice, big partition, which is mostly empty and waiting for me to fill it up with great pictures!
Well, that’s the plan at least.

In any case, now you have some idea how to change out a laptop hard drive if you should ever want to upgrade for yourself. I really left out a lot of the nitty-gritty detail that I felt was either self-explanatory or that you should really know how to do before attempting this in the first place. Perhaps not the best tutorial, but at least a good step-by-step overview of how to get it done!

JuicemanJunior

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I’ve started juicing.

This is probably not a big deal to anyone else but me, but, well, I’ve gotten a juicer and started juicing. Now, this does not mean that I’m using steroids, which is what I think of when I hear “juicing”. No, this is actual juice, made from fruits and vegetables. Mostly, though, vegetables.

I don’t eat very well. I admit it. I don’t get the daily recommended amount of fruits and vegetables and I eat far, far too much meat. I know this. I know this is why I tend to be so heavy, why my blood pressure is as higher than it should be, why I feel older than I should. I know I should eat better and be healthier to help keep cancer from coming back. So, I’m making a compromise.

When I was near the end of chemo, it seemed like every cancer survivor I ran into asked me if I’d gotten my juicer yet. I’d meant to get one of those years ago, I would tell them. And, I’ll have to get around to that one of these days really soon, I’d add. But, more than a year after finishing chemo, I still hadn’t done it. No, it took my own vanity to push me to go get one, any one, to try. See, I need to keep my nutrition levels as high as possible, while keeping my calorie intake as low as possible and juice seems like the way to do it.
So, I bought a juicer.

It is, in fact, a Juiceman Junior brand juicer, named after the original juice advocate. Though, sadly, he can no longer call himself the “Juiceman” due to contractual obligations. Still, he was the one everyone remembers from the late night ads and the Jim Carrey skit on In Living Color. I thought it would make me all crazy, like everyone who was on those ads seemed to be, to me. But, it hasn’t made me any crazier than I already am. And, you know what? I’ve been enjoying the juice!
Yeah, who would have thought it? I like taking apples and carrots and celery and spinach and parsley and ginger and sweet peppers and juicing them all together. It’s pretty amazing. Oh, sure, at first glance it looks disturbingly green and I was sure it would taste terrible, but, really, it doesn’t. In fact, it tastes sort of good. And, now, I’m getting into a rhythm of making enough juice for two or three days at a time, so it’s actually getting easier to do! It’s sort of a pain to clean the machine, but, so far, I like the results, so it’s worth the work. I don’t think I’ve lost any weight yet, but I do feel better already.

So, yeah, as strange as it seems, I’ve become one of those crazy juice people. And I don’t even mind!

JuicemanJunior

Originally uploaded by Network Geek

I bought a juicer this weekend.

Specifically, I bought a Juiceman, Jr. It’s probably not the best one there is, but it was cheap, so I figured I didn’t have much to lose.
I’ve been meaning to buy a juicer for a long time. Back when I was just about done with my chemotherapy, I ran into a lot of cancer survivors and they all seemed to have juicers. I lost count of how many times I was asked if I had gotten a juicer yet. I’d meant to, but just never got around to it. Well, after this past week, I decided it was finally time to stop obsessing over getting the “right” one and just get the cheapest one for now. I figured once I had some clue what I was doing and how much I was going to actually use it, then I could decide on a better machine. In the mean time, though, I figured that something was better than nothing.

So, off I went this weekend to Target and I got myself the cheapest juicer they had. At $59.99, it was the Juiceman, Jr. Turns out, this was the machine endorsed by the “Juiceman” himself. That crazy, white-haired guy on the infomercials that started a lot of the most recent juicing craze. Turns out, he was a cancer survivor, too, and credits much of his health and recovery to juicing. Of course, I didn’t know all that when I first read about juicing or juicers. But, I know that I’ll ingest fewer calories with a higher nutritional content via fresh juice. And, since I’m sure I’m not getting my daily recommended servings of fruits and vegetables, I figured this might help with that, too.  All I need to do now is figure out how to “juice” bacon!

Seriously, the bottom line is that I need to improve my overall health and diet. I know dropping a few pounds will help in a lot of ways, but I need to be careful not to let my nutrition levels drop while I try to shed those pounds. Juicing seems like a good way to help make that happen.
We’ll see, I guess, but either way, it’s time I started making more positive changes in my life.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years of trying to get other people interested in you."
   --Dale Carnegie

Well, the doctor told me that I’m still alive yesterday!

So, yesterday I got the results from my scan last week. Everything was good. Well, mostly.
I mean, my blood pressure was low enough to surprise the aid, which is good considering they were concerned that I was going to blow a gasket when I first started going to M. D. Anderson. I mean, my blood pressure was almost twice then what it was today. Literally. They thought I was going to stroke out before they could start chemotherapy treatments. Now, with medication, it’s on the lower side of normal.
And, my blood counts were all pretty normal. I’m still a little on the anemic side, but even that wasn’t worth mentioning.

She was a little concerned about my weight, but, then, I know it’s a bit of a problem.
So, I need to get my bike back into shape and start riding. In spite of what some people may think, I have been working out at least three times a week for a couple months. But, dumb bells and hitting the heavy bag just isn’t taking the weight off. I feel better than I have in two years, but, then again, considering that I was basically a walking corpse at one point there, that’s not saying much.
Oh, and I need to get a juicer like I’ve been meaning to for months. Several cancer survivors I know or have met all swear by theirs, so, I figure I might as well get a less expensive one and see how I like it. What can it hurt, right?

Anyway, all is well.
Nothing to see here.
Move along. Move along.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"Sticking to good habits is like having a savings account: when hard times come, we can take the 'investment' we've made and overcome our problems."

Surely, you didn’t think I’d actually pass up the opportunity to be philosophical on Christmas Day?

I’m sure some of my more secular readers will wince a little, but, well, it’s the celebration of the birth of Jesus and light into the world, so… So, I think about God and the nature of the universe on religious holidays like this. And, as commercial a holiday as this has become, it is still a religious holiday. At church last night they told us about how God loved the world so much that He gave us His son, who was destined to die for our sins, that we might be forgiven and find redemption. I’ll tell you true, sin I understand all too well. The other stuff, though, well, I struggle with it. It’s not that I came from a bad home or a rough neighborhood or anything like that. In fact, quite the opposite is true. I have a good, relatively tight-knit family and I grew up in a relatively affluent neighborhood. But, somewhere between junior high and my divorce I found more than my fair share of sin. I found it in spite of knowing better. I found it because I went looking for it, to see what I was missing, I guess.

I guess I found more than my fair share of redemption, too. It’s a strange thing, really, since I mostly did what I could to hide from it. But, then, God’s plan for all that, sin and redemption both, is a mystery to me. That mystery is what I’ve been thinking about today. I’ve been thinking about it a lot the past week, really, as we got closer to Christmas. God’s plan baffles me. I suppose it should, really. Who can know the mind of God?
I envy people who think they know God’s will for them. I envy those proud souls who think they know what the Scriptures all mean and how to sort everyone and what we should all do. I wish I had that kind of knowledge, that kind of confidence. Me, well, I’m not so sure. God surprises me still. Ha! God surprises me constantly!
But, I know people who believe they know God’s will. Hell, I have friends who believe they know God’s will, or at least some part of it. When I express a certain amount of despair over my ignorance, my sense of being lost in the wake of that. I struggle with seeking His will for me. I struggle to know if it’s His will or my own that I hear when I seek for what to do. There are times when I feel like God is telling me to do somethings that I don’t want to do. You see, that’s why I have a hard time believing those people who claim to know God’s will. He never seems to tell them to do things that are difficult. Have you noticed that?

It’s only in the Bible that people are told to do the difficult things. I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who claims to know God’s will that thinks He’s telling them to do something that they’d rather not. But, you see, that’s my problem. I think God is telling me something. Something I’d rather not be true. I think He’s telling me that I’m meant to be alone. No kids, no wife. Alone. I have friends that disagree, but there are signs and portents. Moving half-way across the country to marry someone only to have that relationship end in divorce and her leaving the state seems a fairly clear sign to me that marriage is not in the cards. Oh, sure, perhaps that means I’m not meant for her, but maybe for someone else. Sure, sure. Except the last person I was dating has left the state, too. I mean, those two things sure seem to point toward me being alone. But, then, I have a friend who tells me that he sees me with someone. Who, he cannot say, but someone. Of course, he sees me as a father, too, but it seems to have been in God’s plan to sterilize me when I took chemotherapy. I’m willing to accept that it was in His plan to keep me alive, but it’s hard to see how I might still have all that other stuff after cheating death, too. I know there’s a lesson there, somewhere, because I do believe that God teaches me through these things, these trials, these conflicts. I have to believe that, or what would be the point?

But, God does surprise me.
Yesterday, I was prepared for a lonely, morose day today, filled with time and distractions from the emptiness. That’s not how today went at all. I was reminded by many friends today that I am far from alone. I may not have that one special, intimate relationship that I so crave, but I am certainly not alone. I was surprised by calls and text messages from friends new and old. And, don’t misunderstand me, there were plenty of people I expected to talk to or hear from today, but some of them took me quite by surprise indeed.
I also had a surprising amount of laughter and joy today.
Perhaps it sounds corny, or quaint, or, perhaps, even a little naive, but I felt something. Call it the presence of God. Call it peace on Earth. Call it what you will, I felt it today. Maybe it was even a bit of that redemption they keep promising in church. Just a hope that maybe my worst fears are wrong. It was no burning bush, but maybe just a hint that my future is filled with possibilities that I cannot know. Just the hope that God has a few surprises for me still.
And, that, dear readers, is what Christmas is about for me, at the best of times. That sense of hope, of second chances, of rebirth, of light that has not yet been overcome by darkness.

Life is full of surprises and God’s plan, seen only, perhaps, in the rear-view mirror, is just one of them, for me.
He surprised me, again, this year. I hope that He will continue to surprise me with the rebirth of light through the rest of this religious year. I hope that you, too, my friends, will have that same experience.

Merry Christmas.

My house almost blew up tonight.

No, really.
As I write this, I’m waiting for a serviceman from Centerpoint Energy to come out and turn my gas back on. Apparently, shortly after I left for church this evening a neighbor smelled gas by my house. They called emergency services in Jersey Village, where I live. When the emergency services got out, they could smell gas, so they turned off my power and got Centerpoint out. Centerpoint repaired the leak, or so it seems. Actually, the first thing the serviceman is going to check is to make sure the leak isn’t a leak any more. Then, assuming all is well, he’ll turn the gas on and I can light all my pilots and so on. That’s why the gas was turned off when I got home. Naturally, they couldn’t find me, since I’d gone to church, so they couldn’t turn anything on until they knew I could light all the pilots again. Otherwise, my house would have filled with gas, hit something electric and, well, let’s just say I was irritated with the whole thing until I got the lights back on and figured out what almost happened. Thank God!

I guess my little efforts and building up a little good karma in the short term paid off today.
See, I helped two people with computer things today. This morning, I started reformating and reinstalling my friend J.’s wife, L’s, laptop. She’d been having problems with it and I looked at it several times, but I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. So, rather than spend any more time on it, I backed up her files and started reinstalling it. Of course, that got interrupted by my power being out, but, still, I’m sure I’ll get it done pretty quick now while I wait for Centerpoint to turn my gas back on.

The other person I did a little mitzvah for was Alison over at Inspired Work of Self-Indulgence.
She was having a little trouble with Comcast and their network. More specifically, it seemed to me she was having a problem with the assigned DNS servers. As any good network geek knows, an Internet connection with out DNS isn’t very useful. She had a connection, sure, but she couldn’t get anywhere. Comcast had been out multiple times trying to fix things. They’d even changed out her cable modem, which seemed to be connected fine when I looked at it. But, her wireless gateway was picking up the normal, default DNS servers from Comcast’s autoconfiguration. I reset the wireless router to the factory default and tweaked the settings a bit. The part that I think mattered the most was adding additional DNS servers from outside Comcast’s network. So now, if the main DNS server goes down or stops working, the backup servers should still find what she’s looking for.
Though, if the problem comes back, it occurred to me on the way home from church that it might be her laptop turning off her wireless connection in a power-save mode, so I might have to check that. (If she’s reading this, that’s a hint!) In any case, it was nice to at long last finally get to meet her. We’ve exchanged e-mail and comments and read each other’s blog posts for quite literally years now. She even sent me cookies when I was in the hospital getting chemotherapy that first time! But today was the first time actually meeting. Hopefully, now that she’s seen I’m completely harmless, it won’t be the last time.
Oh, and I got to meet Piedmont and his new pet human, er, owner. Both were sweet, too. And, of course, I got to meet Cheyenne, Alison’s chocolate lab. She’s as cute in person as in the pictures Alison takes of her and as spoiled, too! She has almost as much tummy as my own Hilda!

So, in spite of almost coming home to a smoking hole in the ground where my house used to be, it turned out to be quite a good day indeed! Stay warm, y’all, and make sure to check your gas!

Update: Apparently, my sins still out-weigh my good deeds, since the guy from Centerpoint Energy never showed up. I stayed up waiting for him until 4:00am, then went to bed, mumbling about liars in the night. I wish it were the first time.
I’m half tempted to turn it on myself and to hell with them. But, better safe than sorry, so I’ll just mumble quiet, Lovecraftian curses on them and try to be on about my day until the next lying serviceman arrives.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"If you want others to be happy, practise compassion.
If you want to be happy, practise compassion."
   --The Dalai Lama

I hate going to the gym.

I like working out, though, for the feeling I get afterward. I like feeling strong and healthy and, well, good. Who doesn’t? But, I hate going to the gym because, well, there are people there, um, watching me. Or, at least, that’s how it feels. I’m sure they’re probably more interested in their own workout, but just the possibility that they might be watching me creeps me out.

So, how can I get a good workout without all that gym equipment?
Thankfully, there are lots of ways. One way, according to Men’s Health, is to use a sandbag. It’s cheaper than a medicine ball and my favorite men’s magazine even has a sandbag workout that the professionals use for you. Because, yes, professional football players don’t use fancy weights to strength train.
Now, I haven’t started doing that one, yet, but I do a lot of push-ups and sit-ups. Not quite as many as I used to do before chemotherapy, but, I’m working up to it again. And, barring holidays or other breaks in my schedule, I do that five days a week in the morning before my coffee and my shower. Great way to start the day!
I have also used, and highly recommend, Dynamic Strength by Sifu Harry Wong. He has plenty of isometric exercises in that book to challenge anyone at any fitness level. And, they’re pretty much all based on traditional Chinese martial arts and health movements, so it’s not some modern, new-age crackpot health scam, either.

I do use a small set of dumbbells, which I’ve had for years, but those weren’t expensive either. And, you can substitute plastic milk jugs full of water, if you need some weights. In fact, with the Russian “kettlebell” phenomena from a few years back, I might just try that out myself!
Of course, I need to start walking with the dog again, too. That light aerobic exercise would probably do more for me than anything else I do now. Besides, I’m sure my Hilda would like to re-explore the neighborhood. Then, after I get a little of my “wind” back, I can start hitting the old heavy bag I’ve got in my garage. When I pounded on that for 20+ minutes three times a week, I was in pretty damn fine shape. Well, one day, I will be again.

So, that’s the way I beat the excuse “The gym’s too expensive and I never go anyway!” What’s yours?

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have."
   --Frederick Keonig

I love single-malt Scotch.

I don’t drink very much these days, due partly to age and partly to getting broken of it during chemotherapy. But, I still like a good single-malt Scotch now and again. Apparently, I’m not the only one. According to an article that ran on Wired’s Danger Room blog, there’s a particular distiller that noticed their webcams getting a lot of traffic from the Pentagon. After a discreet inquiry, it turns out that the distilling process they use, and, one presumes, the equipment, is very much like a process used to refine weapons of mass destruction. What was happening is that trainers were using these webcams to train weapons inspectors! Whiskey as a training aid! Yea for government work!
And, apparently, in honor of that, the fine folks at the Bruichladdich Distillery made a “WMD – The Inspectors” whiskey. Sadly, this seems to be a collector’s item and, in the States, you have to settle for “WMD II The Yellow Submarine 1991 “, which can be found about halfway down this page.

No word on how good, smooth, etc. it is at all. Or, if there’s a government discount!

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"No matter what goes wrong, there is always someone who knew it would."

Yes, you read that right, The Five Worst Things About Surviving Cancer.

When Kat asked me to write a guest post for the Canard Collective, this was the first topic that jumped to mind. Well, actually, to be fully honest, my first thoughts were about how much easier it would be to write about the five best things about, well, almost anything. The five best things about being divorced, for instance, or being unemployed or… Well, you get the idea. But, then, being the contrarian that I am, I thought about this. You know, people always think when you survive a major illness, or, as I like to say, cheat death, that your troubles are over. But, gentle readers, I’m here to tell you that it is not so. Surviving is just the beginning of the problems.

So, go over to the Collective and read what I wrote.  Then laugh at how different it is from all the other stuff that people did guest posts about.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."
   --Abraham Lincoln

I hadn’t really planned on taking a vacation this year.

I mean, between all the time I took last year for chemotherapy and my lack of funds due to paying for all that, well, I just hadn’t planned on taking any time for myself this year. Oh, maybe the occasional long weekend, but that was about it. But, after reading this article on Hotjobs about taking time away from work… Well, let’s just say I’m reconsidering it. (And, no, the potential of winning a free trip to Tahiti, also on that article I linked to, did not have any influence over me!)

That first article suggests taking time off, even if you don’t leave the house, but just stay home and read. That was what got the wheels turning in my head. I have this giant stack of books, again, and I never seem to have enough time to read. I could take two or three days before a weekend and just read all day long. Heck, I could probably even do it more than once! Oh, the joy of a day spent reading…
Then, too, there was an article on the New York Times, linked to by LifeHacker, suggesting a number of less expensive vacations one might take. Though, I have to admit, the comments left by other readers were just as good as the article and, in most cases, less expensive than anything suggested by the Times. I particularly liked the idea of taking several days and being a tourist in your own town. There are so many things in Houston that I haven’t done! I’ve lived here ten years and I’ve never seen the San Jacinto Monument, for instance. And, there are so many museums! In fact, I even know someone who used to curate at the Menil. I could probably talk him into acting as a guide for me.
And, now that I have such a nice camera, think of all the opportunities to explore and take pictures.

Advice from your Uncle Jim:
"If you are all wrapped up in yourself, you are overdressed."
   --Kate Halverson