Friday, August 24, 2007

When your ju ju goes bad it can really go bad.

The last few days have been VERY trying. It started with my main development machine acting up. At first I thought it was software but no amount of tweaking things helped. Eventually, in absolute frustration, I took the machine in to be serviced. While I was at it, I also took in the boy's machine which has been unusable for over a year (they got viruses on it and never felt like cleaning it up).

So while those machines were in the shop, I went back to my prior development machine (I always keep two). Then it too began to misbehave. About then the shop calls and says it's a bad disk drive. Fortunately I've got a spare so I drive it down to the shop (discovering along the way that the town is putting in water mains and has the street to the shop in a fine mess, never mind they are repaving the return route which is also in a fine mess). About the time I get home, the shop calls and says the disk on the boy's machine is also dead. Fortunately, I've got another spare, so it's back to the the shop again.

Once I'm home, my old development machine completely locks up. So I take it into the shop. Wouldn't you know, another disk drive. Now I'm out, so I go down to Circuit city and buy another one, take it to the shop and start home. About half way there, the tech calls and it turns out the drive and controller are incompatible (drive to large). Now I've got to find a smaller drive. No such beast locally, so I end up paying the shop price ($170 for a $75 drive).

I've now put those three machines on contract but at the end of the day I'm out about $800 and 2 disk drives. On a positive note, I now have 2 new spares but I think I'll return those.

I've got my main development machine back and have begun to rebuild it. Should be done in another 4 or 5 hours. In aggregate the thing is going to cost me over $1000 and 3 or 4 days work.

I suppose I should think about prayer or sacrifices or something.

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