“Sometimes a thing gets broke, can’t be fixed.” – Kaywinnit Lee “Kaylee” Frye, Firefly Episode ‘Out Of Gas’

Speaking of Troubleshooting: Last post I mentioned wanting to fix my dad’s comp. Well, turned out the CD I did have didn’t have a repair console, so with it my options were just about as limited as last weekend. I gave up then and there: The clipboard of the primary windows installation was completely shot, so I booted up the secondary one that I had accidentally installed last weekend and used it to backup the most important files on an external drive. Then I formatted all logical drives and re-installed windows once more, so there’s only one left. I set that one up for my dad and although I forgot to install Adobe Reader on it, he can work with it for the time being.
Granted, that again took most of the evening, but between me starting this task around 4 pm and midnight, dad and I polished off 3/4 of a bottle of whiskey. Actually, that was the least stressful part of my day. The others were changing my car’s wheels and getting mom’s new LNB where it’s supposed to be.

Let’s hope next weekend goes easier.

Looks like it’s been 21 years already since The German Democratic Republic became part of the Federal Republic of Germany. Since then, October 3rd has been German Unity Day, a national holiday. And since this is not a political blog, I’m gonna leave it at that. Actually, I only brought it up to have an excuse for a Firefly quote.

Now for the second part of the headline: When I got home on friday, dad asked me if I could have a look at their comp this weekend ’cause it’s not booting up any more. I didn’t get around to do anything about it until today and I didn’t manage to completely fix it today, either. Granted, I only invested 3 hours into the problem, but still…
Well, the main problem was that the comp didn’t boot up. Actually, it did boot, but loading windows failed at one point, no matter if you were booting it normally or trying to start it in Safe Mode. It showed a BSOD and restarted the machine right away. After switching the automatic restart off, I found out that something must be wrong with the file system, thanks to the internet having information on the STOP code 0×0024.
So I grabbed the Recovery CD-Rom that came with the comp, put it in and booted from the drive to start the repair console. That worked up to the point where I wanted to start the repair console. There were no options to install, uninstall or fix Windows, the setup utility just checked the filesystem and installed Windows without any further prompting. Luckily, it didn’t format or overwrite any data, because it merely installed a second instance on drive D, but it did give me a little scare.
On the plus side, this fixed the file system and it was again possible to boot up the first installed instance of Windows. However, this one is still FUBAR: The task bar is hidden and I wasn’t able to bring it back up, Drag&Drop doesn’t work any more and starting IE just leads to seeing it for about half a second before it’s gone again.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what causes those problems. The IE troubles are most likely due to some files being broken or gone, but the D&D and task bar problems beat me. Those were the things I tried to fix for most of the time today and I couldn’t come up with any working solution. I have some ideas left for next weekend, though: I’ll try to run the Repair Console from a different Windows CD, one that gives you those options. And maybe I’ll just try to install a new IE, that may possibly take care of all the problems as well. I see a connection there: The task bar can’t be resized from ‘minimum’ because Drag&Drop is broken and that may be broken because it uses the same component that kills the IE.
So… wish me luck… next weekend.

[ADDENDUM:]
The storm’s been and gone. No rain, no real lightning, the Heat Lightning was only followed by thunder a few times. The temperature situation didn’t improve much, either. Ah well, the city will get a real thunderstorm on Saturday, when I’m in Munich again.

Things were off to a weird start from the beginning. Inviting a couple of people to come to Berlin with me and making some crazy plans considering this all, I ended up with about 10 people who would have been able to travel together if all went well. In the end, only 4 of them were there at all and only 2 of those traveled together, those two being my colleague Jens and me. This was in no small part my own fault, I suppose, but let’s not cry over spilled milk.
In the end, the plan for today saw us taking off here at 4 pm, arriving at Berlin at around 7, attending the gig and driving home after that. So far the theory. In the end, we barely made it at 4, since I almost forgot the tickets , but that was no big problem, as the navigational system showed us arriving at around 7:15 pm and started counting down from that after we got on the Autobahn. That is, until we got into that traffic jam south of Leipzig, where we lost about an hour. Then we needed something to eat and in the end, we almost got lost in Berlin, due to some rerouting because of road construction.
To top it all off, I got a message around 8:30 that the Poets were supposed to be the first to play at 9 pm.

Long story short, we arrived at around 9:15 and the band had already started to play… but it wasn’t the Poets. I thought that it was Popcorn Drama, the warmup band, and I didn’t learn that it was actually Kärtsy until they had already left. Jens had already figured that out, but honestly, I didn’t care too much. They made pretty good music as well and that’s what counts.

During the time Kärtsy was on stage, I successfully located some of the forum members who were supposed to be there and notified RBF and Wlodi of my presence. Raspu didn’t need any notification, as he spotted me first. When Kärtsy had left and the rearranging of the stage was in progress, I got introduced to and notified of some more forum members (Mel, Sascha, Mariamus, Ellen, Fallinghome,…) and we chatted a bit. As expected, that was quite a bit of fun. Granted, I was standing out a bit, since I was wearing the black Poets shirt with the silver (glitter) logo, and that very same shirt made me sweat like hell due to the heavier fabric, but who cares. *g*
The sweating could also be related to the fact that the place really was hot. Marko likened it to a sauna at one point.

Speaking of which: Don’t expect me to write a big gig report from here on out. I was way too busy having fun, singing along with the songs and ‘rocking out’ (I think that’s a pretty accurate term) to keep things like a tracklist in mind or take pictures. The latter was also due to me feeling safe in the belief that RBF would take plenty pictures, all of which would be better than mine anyways… even if I had brought my camera and not left it in the car.

I do believe to remember that they started the show with DWA and ended it with CoR as an encore. Lift, D4T, Smoke and Mirrors, I&D, War, Dying to Live, 15 min Flame, Change, and possibly Given and Denied were also in the mix. May well be that I forgot one or more songs and I don’t remember the order at all.
Of course, there were the usual antics on stage, like the sauna comment, something about the audience sounding like that of a soccer match and Marko taking Olli’s seat (Was that the Tom&Jerry theme there?) And a comment by Jens during Change (“Like being in a bavarian beer tent.”) led to me grabbing him and Raspu and engaging in what is commonly known as ‘Schunkeln’ in Germany, just for the hell of it. (I got a feeling like Marko approved of it… or it made him laugh, don’t remember that well. Either way, it’s a win *g*)

Time passed way too fast, though, as usual, and around midnight the gig was over. Marko and Olli came out later, giving autographs, having pictures taken with fans and the like. Meanwhile, there was a bit of calming down, walking around, talking with others and such, until Raspu suggested a picture of Marko, all present Prowlers of the Fall and the Prowlers Banner and that was also taken care of. (Jens took it. Suppose I’ll somewhen see how it turned out.)

After that, it wasn’t long until we decided to head home, a ride that started at 0030 and was mostly uneventful (Thank God… or any other deity – or lack thereof – of your choice). Filled up on gas at some point and Jens had me take over halfway home, due to him being unattentive, and I parked the car here at 4:15.
Now it’s 5:45 and I’m still pretty wired. I think watching the sunrise is out of the question by now, though, so I’ll just check on the sun’s status and then try to sleep. Otherwise my body will hate me to…day. More than I already expect it to, that is.
EDIT: Looks like my body decided not to hate me. Good thing.

Gotta say 4 words, though: Totally. Worth. It. Would do it again.

Saturday saw the death of my second cash card within 4 weeks. 3 if you don’t count the week where I didn’t have a card ’cause I was waiting for this one. Possibly even less, regarding the fact that I can’t pinpoint the time when the card really kicked the bucket. Thursday I had been using it to buy goceries because I’d been too lazy to stop at the ATM, but today I found out that the terminals in the store access the chip that is on the card and not the magnetic stripe. The ATM, however, usually accesses the magnetic stripe.
I found out now that saturday really was the first time that I ever tried to use the new card in an ATM… which leads to the possibility that it was trashed from the moment I received it or – even worse – I already received a damaged one.
At least it’s possible that I can still pay my groceries with this card.

In related news, I have a new account at a different bank today. The bank which handles my old account is a pretty regional one and it’s impractical for me to go 150 km everytime I have a problem accessing my money.Thus, I’m switching to a bank I can go to near anytime. And by ‘go’, I mean ‘go’… as in ‘walk’. Granted, they’re only open from 8 or 9 to 6 on weekdays and from 8 or 9 to 12 on saturdays, but that’s a lot more than the times of my old bank (8 to 6 on Tue and Thu, 8 to 12:30 on Wed) or other banks (add 8 to 6 on Mo and 8 to 12:30 on Fri).

Unrelated to all that, I was having an idea about trying to write a small artificial swarm intelligence. I was thinking about using Threads in Java… we’ll see how that works out. so far, I’ve just set up Eclipse and the 1.6.20 JDK
Other than that, I try to engage the hell out of Japanese Merchant Shipping in the Pacific Ocean of 1941/42… with an S-18 Class Submarine in Silent Hunter 4. At least that’s my favorite type of mission, starting in Manila, though I don’t mind the occasional espionage if I start from Pearl Harbor or a convoy attack if I have a bigger submarine. Might be I put a Hints page up for SH4 somewhen.

And finally, sickness is back. Need new hankies again… and all that with the Poets gig coming up next week…

Christian Morgenstern
(1871-1914)