Escape from Reality
I've been quiet for a while.
First, it was because I was busy. I could have posted something along the lines of 'Dude, where's my data?' when a hard disk crash wiped out all of my rail simulation work. Yes, some of it was backed up, but I learned the hard way about using large (250Gb) disks; you need a large disk in order to properly back up everything. I had lots of scattered backups on smaller disks and spent ages searching through them before I got back to where I had been. The strange thing was, this crash followed a similar crash on Little Petal's machine. Sadly, I couldn't do anything for her because her hard disk was a SCSI model, of which I had none similar, and she had studiously refused to do any backups or let me take any Acronis images, even after the machine began to make alarming noises on startup. So a few more days went there as well.
And then; I could have posted about the fun of pedalling around North Somerset on a Bickerton folding bicycle after a long weekend spent in a caravan while I explored the remains for the West Somerset Mineral Railway and rode around on the West Somerset (working) Railway behind a blue Somerset and Dorset 2-8-0 engine, of the same type as that in Rail Simulator. But, when I got home, the pressure of being away from the internet for so long got to me, and I had a mad morning clicking around through all sorts of strange places on the web. One of the porn sites must have had a cleverly-designed popup which, when closed by the little 'x' in the top right corner, installed something called Smitfraud. Trend Housecall recognised it was there but couldn't get rid of it, Spybot tried valiantly to remove it but crashed to the desktop each time I reached a particular stage in the process, so I went online and found the Smitfraud removal tools. They, in combination with using msconfig for a controlled startup, got rid of the fake desktop screaming that I was infected with a virus and got me back the task manager. For a couple of days I felt I had got rid of Smitfraud, but when I used TCPView to see whey the machine still seemed a bit slow, I found that my machine (fortunately not the simulation workstation I had only just finished repairing), was now a zombie relay station for spam and god knows what else. So I had to revert to an Acronis image taken a couple of months earlier.
After that, like Marvin, I fell into a bit of a decline. I used Linux to wander around the dodgy sites. I worked as many hours as I could in gardens to cover the mortgage for the couple of weeks when I went out to Australia, courtesy of Little Petal, and came back to a cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable England. I watched the terminal decline of the economy. I watched my pitiful savings become almost useless after the cut in interest rates. Without a future, I found it too hard to dream. It is hard to escape into flights of fancy when your feet are stuck in the slough of despond. I pondered cutting them off just beneath the knee to escape, Douglas-Bader style, but I doubt the NHS would do the deed and I can't see BUPA offering it as an anti-depressant cure. I couldn't afford BUPA anyway.
Sic Transit MMVIII
And so, for MMIX, I shall begin again. The Sopwith Camel will fly once more.
Australia, by the way, was wonderful.
First, it was because I was busy. I could have posted something along the lines of 'Dude, where's my data?' when a hard disk crash wiped out all of my rail simulation work. Yes, some of it was backed up, but I learned the hard way about using large (250Gb) disks; you need a large disk in order to properly back up everything. I had lots of scattered backups on smaller disks and spent ages searching through them before I got back to where I had been. The strange thing was, this crash followed a similar crash on Little Petal's machine. Sadly, I couldn't do anything for her because her hard disk was a SCSI model, of which I had none similar, and she had studiously refused to do any backups or let me take any Acronis images, even after the machine began to make alarming noises on startup. So a few more days went there as well.
And then; I could have posted about the fun of pedalling around North Somerset on a Bickerton folding bicycle after a long weekend spent in a caravan while I explored the remains for the West Somerset Mineral Railway and rode around on the West Somerset (working) Railway behind a blue Somerset and Dorset 2-8-0 engine, of the same type as that in Rail Simulator. But, when I got home, the pressure of being away from the internet for so long got to me, and I had a mad morning clicking around through all sorts of strange places on the web. One of the porn sites must have had a cleverly-designed popup which, when closed by the little 'x' in the top right corner, installed something called Smitfraud. Trend Housecall recognised it was there but couldn't get rid of it, Spybot tried valiantly to remove it but crashed to the desktop each time I reached a particular stage in the process, so I went online and found the Smitfraud removal tools. They, in combination with using msconfig for a controlled startup, got rid of the fake desktop screaming that I was infected with a virus and got me back the task manager. For a couple of days I felt I had got rid of Smitfraud, but when I used TCPView to see whey the machine still seemed a bit slow, I found that my machine (fortunately not the simulation workstation I had only just finished repairing), was now a zombie relay station for spam and god knows what else. So I had to revert to an Acronis image taken a couple of months earlier.
After that, like Marvin, I fell into a bit of a decline. I used Linux to wander around the dodgy sites. I worked as many hours as I could in gardens to cover the mortgage for the couple of weeks when I went out to Australia, courtesy of Little Petal, and came back to a cold, wet, and thoroughly miserable England. I watched the terminal decline of the economy. I watched my pitiful savings become almost useless after the cut in interest rates. Without a future, I found it too hard to dream. It is hard to escape into flights of fancy when your feet are stuck in the slough of despond. I pondered cutting them off just beneath the knee to escape, Douglas-Bader style, but I doubt the NHS would do the deed and I can't see BUPA offering it as an anti-depressant cure. I couldn't afford BUPA anyway.
Sic Transit MMVIII
And so, for MMIX, I shall begin again. The Sopwith Camel will fly once more.
Australia, by the way, was wonderful.
posted by Sopwith-Camel | 12:55 pm
2 Comments:
Well, glad you are back. Sorry about the computers, but, ug, many here also had similar problems. It seems the hackers are getting so much more proficient.
'lo, Joe
And happy new year, BTW. Yes, hackers are getting better, and porn is getting worse. It's a sad state of affairs.
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