I hate hardware failures (Pt. 2)

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I hate hardware failures.

Category: Computer and Network
Posted by Sir Geek on 09/25/2005 11:31PM
This has NOT been a fun past few weeks. On last Sunday, the 18th, we came down to find our main Webserver and Email Server ( for our main domains ) dead. ( Bleedin' Demised !) and nothing would get it working again. I, luckilly, had another hard drive that I could put into it and re-install from. Unfortunatly, I had no backups, zero, nada, NOTHING . Some of it wasn't too bad to loose but one thing was the family website that Callie runs for her family. We had lost 5 years of data. Even worse was that we lost 5+ years worth of log files/etc.

Then, in the middle of the week, I lost the machine that I do development for linux-ha on.

This tops off LAST weeks problems, I basiclly lost the main disks for our music and backup server. The worst thing is that the company that sells the product will not do a damned thing to help me. I don't have a support contract with them ( at 2500 per year ) so I'm not worth helping. Even though they have to make the software available they won't.

I'm currently persuing other options to get our other machine fixed.

So. How was your week ?

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I hate M$ Windows

Category: Computer and Network
Posted by Sir Geek on 07/08/2005 1:22PM
I recently had to wipe my C drive and re-install Windose from scratch. Why ? An application from Sony ( to listen to their "music" files ) attempted to install some sort of "Digital Restrictions Manangement" on my computer and it borked my drive. All I can say is that THANK GOD that I don't install anything important on the C drive. It took me 2 days to get Windoze to install and I will probably take the next month to get every application re-installed. Thank GOD that Callie is a computer geek too and she can install stuff ( she installed Firefox, Mozilla, Thunderbird yesterday for me). Now to make a process that backs up the important data from C to our file server. What a pain.

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My New Toy

Category: Computer and Network
Posted by Sir Geek on 05/02/2005 08:29AM
Callie and I recently purchased a Netgear MP101 It is a networked MP3 Player. The device can be wireless ( but it just wouldn't connect to my wireless network even 1 foot away from the router) so its connected via a CAT-5 cable. The netgear software sucks ( doesn't want to work on a Windows Shared Driver - since my MP3's are all on a shred driver on one of my Linux machines ).

But that's fine, there is a free piece of software from Twonky Vision called music server that works wonderfully.

Don't bother with the tech support people, they can't read and have no idea how to solve a problem that isn't in their standard script.

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Mr. Sucko alive and well

Category: Computer and Network
Posted by Sir Geek on 01/26/2005 12:28AM
Well.. It's been a hellish 4 days here. The main HD for MrSucko.org/XorendaX.org began a slow agonizing death. It sounded horrible. Ask Callie. It took me 3 days and I was DAMN lucky that I had another HD to copy it to. Unfortunatly, the HD wouldn't boot ( Sucko is on an old Pentium 200 and it wouldn't recognize the 40HD I had around ). So I had to go out and purchase a 20 GB ( that cost me MORE than the 40GB HD did). Then I did another copy of the information and while doing that, the 10 year old SCSI HD finally died. So I took the 40GB drive I had copied things to 1st and copied from it and now *knock on wood* things are happy again.

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I hate ISPs that don't listen.

Category: Computer and Network
Posted by Sir Geek on 01/27/2004 12:15PM
Saturday Night/Sunday Morning our DSL Modem died ( so that's why Mr. Sucko/etc. has been down ) so on Sunday morning I called tech support and told them ( "The modem is dead, no lights are coming on and I HAVE plugged it into several different sockets to make sure" ). They said "Ok, it must be a dead modem, We'll replace it" ( Great, saves me 100 bucks ). I tolde the phone support person that I would prefer to just bring the dead modem to the office rather than wasting the time of a site tech. She said OK. So I wait for Tech Support to contact me on Monday morning ( They called when I was in a meeting ) and left a message without an area code for their cell phone . Around 10:00 AM I called tech support back, I was told they wanted to schedule someone to come to my house to replace the modem ( I told her that I was supposed to bring the dead modem to their offices to replace it so the modem is WITH ME, not at my house. Their response "Oh.". So they tell the support person to contact me.

Next thing I hear when I called back at about 1:00PM was that they sent a tech to verify my connection at the central office ( upon which I informed them that the MODEM was dead, nothing wrong with the line ), Again, the response "Oh." . They have me leave a messages with the tech person. Message left at 1:30PM, and I got no response, so at about 4:30, I contact the tech support again and they have me leave a message with their supervisor.

And by 5:30 No one calls me back on Monday ( and there were no messages later when I got paged in here at 12:30AM )

So I get a call this morning and I tell them the bad modem is hanging in a plastic bag on my back door since no one would be there to let them in ( Callie WAS there but she sleeps late since we go to bed at 3:00AM or later )

Then about 11:45AM, Callie hears someone banging on the front door and when she gets dressed and heads down, she finds the NEW modem on our front steps and the old modem still hanging on the back door.

As of now, I'm just GLAD the damn thing is working happily

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