Hard Drive Suicide

With the new PC in hand and all my files transfered over to it, it was time to wipe the hard drive so I can pass it along to a co-worker.* I use a program called KillDisk to over writes everything on a drive with zeros, then re-install the operating system, so that the next person starts with a clean slate.

*I was going to donate it to Goodwill, but found someone here at work who is starting a Tax Prep business and needed to keep that stuff separate from the household PC.

I made a bootable USB drive to erase the hard drives, but for some reason the PC wouldn’t start up using it. So I installed the Windows version and it wiped the secondary hard drive and it wiped the second partition on the main drive, but would not commit suicide by wiping the drive it was installed on. Not unexpected, the computer was just obeying the 3rd Law of Robotics: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I ended up burning a CD to kill the main drive.

Yo te Mostrar? el M

We rode the tandem to work today and had the afternoon off, so as I gathered up Donna to go change for the ride home, I overheard Trina, another planner in the cubicle behind her, say to Ian, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

Now, taken out of context in an office environment, you just might wonder what was going on there…

Fridays at ASCO for lunch we get Mexican brought in. We don’t have a cafeteria, but the sister of a woman who works on a Assembly line fixes the food for delivery to the Valve Store(R). It started small, just the folks that work on her line, but once word got out how good the food is, especially the green chile sauce, it has branched out to all around the plant.

Us office types give our order to Ian, one of the Assembly Engineers, who gathers the money and gives the order sheet to the woman. I was kind of bummed that I missed out on the Mexican this week as one of the offerings was a burrito with white rice and the green chile sauce on the side and this is my favorite. Apparently Trina is fond of the sauce as well, because her container was not full to the top. She was complaining to Ian about the quantity of it and he must have been dismissive of her concern. So that is why she said, “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”

11,000 Episodes

100 episodes is the usual limit that once a TV show passes, it becomes eligible for syndication, and apparently, The Big Bang Theory has recently crossed that threshold, because it is on all over the place.

Being a minor geek, I of course had heard about the show, but never watched it. Until now.

BBT has now replaced Two and a Half Men as our 7 to 8 PM must see TV as it airs then on the local CBS affiliate. It is also on TBS, where if desired you can waste all of Tuesday night away watching back to back episodes for 3 solid hours.

The Purple Whale crossed the eleven thousand mile threshold on Sunday.

Goodbye Red Envelope, Hello Redbox

Our Netflix account has been on hold for a while…and we have not missed it at all. We were certainly not getting our moneys worth from the $8.55 a month we were paying them because we barely watched a movie a week.

🙂 BTR & D2! found [Unknown Cache] Right of Way QR
We walked over from Right of Way Medical after we couldn’t find it first off. We just followed the RoW and it led us on a looping path to near GZ, but it didn’t seem *too* long because we took turns kicking a half dead exercise ball that we stumbled on behind Hitchcock Rehab/Family Y.

We made the find rather quickly here. Thanks to the previous finders who left behind a buck and some change, which we took, and who left behind a band aid, which we didn’t take, but will certainly be useful to someone in the future with all the thorns surrounding the hide. TFTH

A few weeks ago I opened up an account on Redbox thinking that, that might be an option. At a buck (actually $1.30) a night, the price is right, about 5 bucks for those same 4 rentals a month. But that buck a night counts for every night you keep it, so there is a big incentive to watch it now, instead of leaving it on the coffee table while we wait for a good time. There is one right in the entry at our favorite store, so it is convenient. But we have yet to try it.

🙂 BTR & D2! found [Traditional Cache] Right of Way Medical
After finding Right of Way QR we came back for another try on this one. I made the find, but truth be told, I got lucky. We left a small necklace and took a quarter. With that 25 cents and the buck we got at RoW QR we had now completely paid for the Crazy Stupid Love DVD we rented just a little while earlier this morning at the Redbox in front of Walgreens…TFTC

Until now.

Title Block

Finally feel like writing something, but I can’t think of title…

We drove the Miata to work on Thursday because we *could* ride home with the top down. But we didn’t drive it today even though it was warmer than yesterday. We rode the tandem.

I found a fool proof method on how to get your wife to agree to let you buy a new computer: While she is in the middle of shuffling the contents around in the kitchen cabinets (for who knows what reason other than to confuse me) just walk in and ask if you can spend $425. Well, that and the fact that I have been moaning about it’s slowness for a couple years (it was purchased just shy of 9 years ago.)

Like the plethora of fragrance commercials that show up on TV before Christmas, you can tell it is January because of all the ads for diet plans and gym memberships.

Which leads us to: “A gym is not designed to make you feel instantly better about yourself. If a gym wanted to make you feel instantly better about yourself, it would be a bar.” which is Rule #1 for Conquering the Gym, go read the other 26.

Started up, went down, still down.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1098

Trophy

We have driven the Miata to work the last couple of days and it is all because of the weather. No, it has not been warm enough to ride with the top down, just the opposite, it has been in the 20’s for morning lows. We took the Emperor because he spent the night in the heated garage so it was nice and warm inside to start the drive, unlike the Purple Popsicle would have been.

Started up, still up.
Miata Top Tran?si?tions since 10/24/08: 1097