Year / 2007

by Greg

Broked

Tuesday morning, I awoke to a few phone calls, a couple IMs and an e-mail or two from a client (and friend) of mine who had woken up to find his website was down. That happens… so I wasn’t too worried. We had just spent 9 straight days getting him up and running on a new server – MAJOR craziness – and all was going well for a week… untill… his account just disappeared from the server. Gone. No trace of it ever having been there.

Thankfully, with some great help from several sources, we got his site up and running again within 24 hours. That was a bit of a miracle, you could say. It was quite welcome news this morning.

This afternoon, after a few more minor things were not going well… I went to check a web page I was working on over on my PowerBook, and I noticed I could not access it. The mouse was still moving, but I couldn’t click anything. I couldn’t get out of it any way I knew how, so … I just shut down the computer and tried again. Unfortunately, it just kept getting worse and worse… until, I was fairly certain I had lost all hope of recovering any of that drive 🙁

I am very good at backing things up, but unfortunately this time, there were DAYS worth of work on that computer that had NOT been backed up. Gone. Lost. No trace of it ever having been there.

Oh! And I almost forgot… I have some old gaming systems (Nintendo NES, Sega Genesis, TI 99/4a) and I had created the entire current Sabres team on the Sega Genesis NHL ’96 game! It’s awesome! The boys and I have enjoyed that. Last night, I played two games, and at the end of the second one, as I was about to shut it off… the screen froze. When it does that, you have to shut it off immediately, or you might lose the season, or perhaps other data. Yes… you guessed it. Not only did I lose the season… I lost every player I created, and all traces of it ever having been there.

Goodness… I’m in a pretty serious rut here…

At one point this evening I wanted to just completely eliminate all things that can break from my life. Mainly I was thinking electronic things… but then I just thought, how about EVERYTHING that can break. No more frustration then, eh? 🙂

Sadly… I do realize that everything breaks. Servers, hard drives, old computers, tables, couches, houses, and yes, even people 🙁 That’s the way it is.

Still, I can’t help but think that some of the great frustration I have endured this past week (and even this whole month so far I think) could have been alleviated had I a bit less dependence or involvement with electronic technology. The weird part is, that’s what I love! I love all the fun technology we have… but it does seem to cause me almost as much grief as enjoyment.

Perhaps a solution would be a technological sabbatical? What’s the likelihood of that? Me giving up technology???? It would certainly be different… 🙂

SO, my PowerBook has been shipped off to Apple again, and it will come back brand new… covered under warranty. But I did lose all the data on that. And there are some other things that are working around me… but it’s only a matter of time before they get broked too.

That’s just no fun. Wish stuff didn’t get broked.

by Greg

Broked – Part II

OK… If you’re following along at home, you might think that last week’s troubles ended with the PowerBook hard drive failing (or perhaps you might even think they ended last week?) 🙂 That is not the case. So, the saga continues with another trip to the Apple Store on Thursday night, following the failure of yet another hard drive!

Thursday morning I was hoping to have a more successful day… just really hoping to finish the crazy week with a normal, quiet day. Wednesday night, Jen & I spent a little time going through the iTunes store to choose some music for her to use her $15 gift card on. That was fun, and after some tough choices, she settled on just the right songs to spend her gift money on. I sent the links up to the computer where we store our iTunes music library on Wednesday night, and made the purchases that following Thursday morning.

After all had downloaded, I went to get Jen’s iPod, and connected it to the computer. It mounted, and started updating, just as it always does. But right as it finished, it gave a little error message. Something like, “Unable to write to disk” or something. That sounded bad, but I assumed it was some strange glitch, and just unmounted the iPod drive and then re-connected it.

That’s when everything got broked again.

The iPod decided not to show up as it is supposed to. It thought it was updating, but iTunes (nor my computer) did not see it. I tried a few things, but eventually it just froze up my two applications that handle mounting iPod hard drives. I tried to force quit both of those, and nothing happened there… so I eventually decided to just unplug the iPod.

It didn’t like that.

It tried to restart, and was not successful. It restarted, then crashed, then restarted, then crashed… until the battery finally died. 🙁 It was a physical hard drive failure. We had just had that happen not 3 months ago! So, the best part was, I assumed it was still warranteed, and we took it up to the Apple Store (our second visit in as many nights.)

I need to make this long story short, so here are the highlights:

1) Long wait at the Apple Store… grumpy Genius handled my troubled iPod
2) “You’re out of warranty,” says grumpy Genius.
3) “How far out of warranty?” asks Greg. “I can’t tell,” replies grumpy Genius.
4) I notice on the paper that the 90-day warranty began on 10-18-2006. It was 1-19-07 that night. ARGH!!! Thankfully, the manager whom we know was working that night, and she took care of us. 🙂
5) They ship back our iPod, and order a new one for us, free of charge.

So, that kind of worked…

Friday morning, I had to restart my computer because Tuesday night the iPod crash had frozen up my disk utility program. So, when I got the chance, I restarted. BUT… for some reason, it spun up my external hard drive, and then would not quit. After waiting a very long time, I decided to force it to shut down. When the external drive is spinning, and you do a forced shut down… that makes a very very bad sound.

I spent the next 45 minutes I think doing all I could to save my 500GB external drive from a hard shut down. Thankfully, that actually worked! Was my luck changing? Were things technological going to begin to improve for me?

Guess not.

Sunday we got the call that the iPod was in and we could come pick it up. Jen did, and when she returned I went up and happily connected it to the computer, so we could load all 25GB or so of our music on there.

It didn’t show up. The computer, and iTunes were not recognizing it. I tried several different things. Nothing. I unplugged it (not recommended) and tried again… again nothing. Finally, the third time I unplugged it, I got the bad, BAD sound again! It fell right back into that loop the last one had done. Restart, crash, restart, crash…

You get the point.

Yes, folks. The REPLACEMENT for the REPLACEMENT of the REPLACEMENT … CRASHED! The FIRST TIME I CONNECTED IT!!!

It has been a very bad technology week here. 🙁

So, we’re headed to the Apple store tonight to have them order another one for us. It’s warranteed… but come on. This is ridiculous!!! Hoping the curse has run its course….

I’ll let you know in episode three…

by Greg

Some Good Reading?

Life In The Rearview Mirror

$12.88

Hey folks…
There has not been much time for blogging of late, which is actually very good. Business is “booming”… I am getting lots of repeat business, and perhaps even cooler, referrals from current clients. That’s neat. I’m very glad God is providing for us through this. I do mostly enjoy what I do.

There will be time when things at least slow down (I’d imagine?) so I’ll post more thoughts here later, but for now, I have been re-reading the book I released last year, “Life In The Rearview Mirror” and there’s some good stuff in there. I’ve been encouraged to read some of the stuff God had taught me in the not too distant past, and to see how that could help me in the now to handle some of the things I (we) am (are) dealing with now. Some stuff about money… and a few chapters lately about just the way God made the world to work best.

I feel like I did not give LITRVM as much attention since the Here’s The Church book was so much more focused “topic-wise” and seemed more relevant to more people. And, it’s a great book, and I am glad so many people have purchased or downloaded it from the GregsHead.net Bookstore. That’s awesome.

I’d like to recommend again that you check out Life In The Rearview Mirror. If you’re able to purchase, that would be great. You can buy it at my bookstore (linked above) or using the button in this post. Or, you can get it at Kavanagh Books right here in Palmyra, or even better… you can purchase straight from Amazon, via my Amazon Store (and they will pay me a commission on the sale of my own book!) 🙂

If you really don’t want to buy the book… may I recommend you read the blog posts from whence the content of LITRVM came? (Well, at least, two of the chapters) 🙂 Here are the links to the two articles I spoke of before. If you can get the book, that would be grand, and I think you’d enjoy it. If not, enjoy these articles from 2005…

The Right Place
Selflessness

by Greg

Free Stuff at iTunes?

iTunesYou may not be aware of this, but iTunes has been offering songs and videos for free for… well, perhaps since the iTunes Music Store made its first appearance! Well, not long ago I discovered a page that has all of the (updated weekly, or more) content at the iTunes store! Just thought I’d share here. It’s usually updated on Tuesdays.

This week, I grabbed the song Lonely By Your Side (haven’t listened yet, it’s just the free single of the week) and the president’s State of the Union address. There are more songs and shows and stuff up there. Not a great selection this week, but defintely a link to hold onto.

So, without further ado…

Here’s the link!

by Greg

That’s About Right…

Thanks to Chris for posting one of these quizzes to his blog, which I then clicked and saw this particular one… If you know me, you’ll agree that it’s pretty accurate… 🙂

You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish
You are pretty evenly split down the middle – a total eunuch.
Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes.
You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don’t actively fight them.
You’re just you. You don’t try to be what people expect you to be.

by Greg

My Face Hurts, and Spooky Dreams

This past weekend, we went over to Buffalo to celebrate with a friend (who is also now our nieces’ grandpa…) his 20 years of working with the same church where Jen’s dad was for some 30 plus years. There were lots of blasts from the past. It was quite nice.

The only not nice thing was Kirsten kept complaining of being slightly sick.. like she needed to throw up maybe. That’s always a bad thing… We made it through the night without that, and a very tired Kirstie fell asleep on the hour and a half ride home. All seemed well.

At about 12:30, all had gone to bed, but I was still putting some things away, cleaning up, etc… when I heard Kirstie crying. I went into her room and she was still asleep… so I just helped her get under her blankets again, I figured she was just really, really tired. She went right back to sleep… all was well.

I went downstairs to watch a science show I had been wanting to watch for a very long time. I’m sure I saw most of it, but near the end, I fell asleep… maybe around 1:15 or 1:30? I was out for a long time, but just before I woke up, I had a very clear dream where I was waking up and Jen said to me, “Good, now you can help Kirstie.” Our clock’s hourly chime woke me up, and I realized where I was – shook off the strange ending to that dream (though I did check to see if Kirstie was crying again or something – and headed upstairs.

All was quiet, until I reached the top of the steps. As my foot touched the top step, Kirstie started crying again!! I was a little freaked out the my wife had told me in a dream that I needed to help Kirsten. But, actually, that made me take her cry more seriously. I went in and found her uncovered again, and as I picked her up to get her blankets, I noticed she was burning up!!! No wonder she was crying!!!

She definitely had a fever, though I couldn’t prove that, since I had no idea where to even look for the thermometer….. 🙂 I did check in the “normal” place, but, not many things are in the “normal” place in our house… 🙂 Anyway, I got her some fever reducing medicine (the last of it) and brought her into the bathroom to give that to her. She started crying again, louder this time. Jen comes in and just stands at the door of the bathroom for a second. No words are spoken. About 3 seconds later, she turns around and just goes back to bed! That was a funny scene. 🙂

Kirstie manages to get the medicine down, followed by a tiny cup of cold water (she really likes that part… even at three in the morning!) and I got her back in bed. I was a bit disturbed by having been told in a dream that my daughter needed help, so I continued to chat with God about her and whether she would be alright. I decided to wait till 3:30 then go check on her.

At precisely 3:30, I went back into her room and checked her forehead… she was cooling right down. She was still awake, so we asked God together to help her rest so she could get better. She smiled, I left, He helped, we went to sleep.

Fast forward to lunch time. The day had been pretty good so far. Kirstie did not eat much for breakfast… but she seemed to be doing fine. During lunch however, she had gotten down to use “the potty” and while contemplating the deep things of life on said potty… she says, “My face hurts. I need to rest so it can get better.”

“Your face hurts?”

“Yeah, right here,” she pointed to her forehead. “I need to rest so it can get better.”

🙂

So, I took her hand and we went up to her room and asked God to take away her face hurt so she could sleep. He did, she did, and all was better.

Kirstie did ask one more time that day if she could rest so her face wouldn’t hurt, but it seems the face hurting ended by Tuesday. We’re glad for that.

It is so fun to hear the things that come from a two-year-old’s heart out through their mouths. It’s kinda weird to hear that comes from the mouth of your spouse in your dreams sometimes…. 🙂