FTJoe

I got a bunch of titanium during the sale from totally wicked. On a side note, were you interested in 0mg mentha? It's in the store.

I thought of Newhart as well when I saw this - my parents use to buy albums with the routines on them, Newhart, Cosby, etc. Newhart as Moses on the phone with "God". That was funny. Have to listen to it outside of work but I'm sure I've heard it before.

Oh man - LOL on that one. My kid had that on and made them turn it off...

Wow - he's like a god. Ya - sounds like you definitely had a hosed drive. Re Gibson, I remember reading this and getting a good idea about how little we all know about what goes on out there: http://www.crime-research.org/library/grcdos.pdf Love the irc chat with ^boss^

Man was I an OS/2 fanboy. You can also blame M$ for a hand in that as well, cross licensing agreements my a$$!!! I should have reached out to you guys when I was doing my triple boot on the netbook. I fear Ubuntu will have to come off. The problem is really Windows as it doesn't play nice when it comes to re-partitioning. I just wanted a three OS partitions and a common one where they can all reach out to and where everyone can play nice but Windows will have none of it. Any tweaks to the drive map and Ubuntu falls apart. I just don't know enough about grub and EFI to know how to get it all working together again. I'll start a thread when I get a chance with pics of the triple boot, was fun, something I didn't have time for as my main PC keeps stumbling...and I rebuild my daughter's lappy from a nasty infection that I believe is a true rootkit and I setup two Dell lappys for friends. I also think I will find out what all this OSX stuff is about via my netbook, though I sense not all MAC fanboys are appreciative of Snow Leopard and where Apple is heading these days. Sorry ddave for the ramblings in your thread

This is too funny...though I guess maybe some think it's okay? http://angryatheist.net/2009/12/20/praying-away-healthcare-reform/ please note this has two of the three subjects that are sure to start a fight in one story!!!

Yo - glad you're on the mend. A friend of ours had a nasty case of flu. Ended up it was a strain of avian flu.

So shortly after posting the last post, I'm working on my daughter's laptop, everything backed up to my array, working on the image all day Friday. So getting ready t start pulling the data I've scrubbed off my machine, and I lose communication with it. Go downstairs and nothing is active, reboot, freezes on the bios screen (where it says press Del to enter setup). I guess my mobo is gone. I pulled the battery and AC and let it sit, back up today but who knows for how long. Aaaarrrrgggghhhhhh. Point is, backup your data!!!!

Here I sit, rebuilding my main PC. A nice, kick *** (at the time I built it), AMD based, 2 TB RAID 5 managed, UPS attached machine. Rebuilding because I neglected to back up my OS partition. Everyone else in my house is backed up to my raid array, not me though...ahhh - arrogance. So anyway, my point is, take my advice with a grain of salt as I wallow in my sins. FWIW - Machine is up, raid array intact, adding back all the things I care about. Using a Vista build (was XP), then I'll probably migrate to W7. I'll tell you what I do on my wife's laptop way down in the post but it's overkill. I'm sure there are free utilities and freebies with the external drives that at least can keep your data backed up. You can either be satisfied with backing up your data, or backing everything up so you don't have to rebuild the software on a hardware crash. If it's just the data, get a 2.5 drive that plugs in to a USB port, or a bigger 3.5 that could be used to maintain an exact copy or a combo of both. I explore all varieties of backup on my wife's lappy but have the luxury of the main drive being a 2.5 drive. Get a UPS if you can, even a cheap one. Make sure it talks to your pc. I have one that my cable modem, router and main pc plug into. When the power goes out, if not back in one minute my main PC does an orderly shut down. Leaves the battery driving just the modem and router so our laptops are still good to go as well as the phone which is through the cable. The UPS also provides protection from surges and brownouts. If you can't get a UPS, get a real surge protector (I like APC products). I forget the terminology, but make sure it warns you when the protection is gone. Most cheap surge protectors will actually take a hit or two, then the protection wears off. When it wears off it continues to provide electricity without any protection. You never know that so next lightening hit, bang, you're dead. Get one that protects every connection to the computer, the power AND the LAN connection. People forget about the lan/cable connections. Don't understand why the PC or TV got fried when they had a surge protector, came in another route, that's all. I also help friends out with their machines, I've saved many a hard drive (or at least long enough to get the data off) with a utility called Spinrite. Even ones going clickety clickety. Basically a drive might appear to be bad because it's reached the limit of errors allowed or the boot sector got whacked, etc. Using spinrite or even a manufacturer utility (they all have them) can mark these sectors as unusable so they aren't viewed as errors anymore. In other words, there are varying degrees of "bad" when it comes to hard drives. Out of the many I've retired for myself and others, I've only had one that was truly shot. Best cleaners out there, bang for the buck, malwarebytes, superantispyware and spybot. Windows firewall is about as good as the free ones, free antivirus should be avast or avira. IMHO. Agreed with the burning of CDs and DVDs. They are temporary at best, I think it has to do with burning versus stamping. Real movies on a a DVD are "stamped" and will last quite a while, the burning we do is temporary. I wouldn't bet on it for more than a year or two. Wife's laptop: I've placed a large drive in the laptop and logically separated into two drives. I use Acronis True Image to make a compressed copy of her boot drive to this logical drive. The boot drive contains both the operating system and her data. My PCs usually have the OS separated from the data but that confuses some folks. This copy takes place once a week or so and it's really just in case she runs into problems on the road. I also have an external drive plugged into the docking station she uses and this is also separated into two logical drives. Two things take place on this drive, every night I make an exact physical copy of her main drive to the first logical drive. Should her drive crap out, crack open the cute case, pop the drive into the lappy, execute a couple of commands on the drive and should be good to go. So that gets her back to a working image no more than a few hours old. I also take an image of the machine to the other logical drive and over the network to my raid array on my machine. Once a week a full image, and every morning an incremental image. This is just an additional image that contains only the data that's been changed since the last full or incremental image. So now we can restore the machine to any day in the past up to the last full backup. I usually keep two weeks of data or so. Finally, to the same external drive, and her local drive if she disconnects, a cute little program from a company called memeo runs that backs up changed data. It came free with the Western Digital external drive. I tell it to just monitor the documents folder and keep five copies of any file that changes. This has two advantages, when a document gets saved that shouldn't have, we can look back at the previous versions and restore them if necessary. If she loses the main drive during the day and has to be restored, I have everything she's worked on that day as long as she saved or filed it. Even going overboard these solutions cost a fraction of the money you spent to recover your data.

I'd like to keep track of how many spousal complaints on smoking I've been saved from hearing (averaged three a day)!!!! She should have one as well for how many days she had to stop worrying so much about me smoking. Hmmm, I have a ton of these actually.

That was my point, I think people get confused when the word hoax is used. I think we do all agree as stated above there are two wars on terror, the real one and the political one.

Ahhhhhh - is that what was meant by it being a hoax? Okay - but the wording is terrible. In other words when dopey said they've found WMDs, and they really didn't. And the concern that they use all the scare tactics to allow themselves to skirt the constitution etc? I'm down with that, just don't use the word hoax (if you could). It's inflammatory and kind of offensive as it appears to dismiss the actual terrorism that does exist. In fact, one could argue the mis-direction is actually a help to the real terrorists.

Amazing how you still say "I want a cigarette". Vape a few times and all of a sudden, "what was I saying?". I started really stocking up on things when I had my first analog at a football game 2 weeks after I quit. Man was that identical to what licking an ashtray must be like!!! I can never go back, I can't believe I EVER started!! And if you do go back, so be it. Get your head on straight, fix what's wrong and get back to it, not a big deal. I'm especially in trouble because I was committed to quitting nicotine which I did so now I really can't go back to analogues. Good luck to you, no failures, even skipping one analogue is a success, see how many you can string together!!

Yeah - guess what, Ubuntu still doesn't bring up the wireless without tweaking. Everything else is very nice. I started over though after taking everything apart to replace the 160GB drive with a 320 I picked up and 1GB to 2GB. Bear in mind I've seen people saying the memory upgrade isn't worth it. And trust me, check the video or pics on how much the machine has to be disassembled to get to the memory...the drive ain't that bad. http://www.jrin.net/2009_07_23/how-to-upgrade-dell-mini-10v-memory I think the wireless is a simple issue, jack into an ethernet connect and then install some drivers...I'll stop hijacking the thread and start a new one with pics of my baby. Still no joy with my real machine and my new server just got delayed until Jan. So I've saved the data off my old raid but my music and movie server is still down...

I'm full boat Irish as well, I understand. Heck, I don't pay any taxes in Europe either but that doesn't stop me from complaining about the French either!! But who doesn't. ;-) I understand that sometimes the votes could be important, but my premise is either way a lying incompetent puppet will end up in the white house so who cares. Of course, there are those few like GW who the lesser of two evils really would have been lesser. Sorry to any fans out there, but he creeped me out, the real prez was Cheney who creeped me out even more. Anyone see the second Harold and Kumar, the GW character in it? Funny. Finally - I always told people I would have voted for Fred, seemed like such a great guy.

I agree - my head spins when it comes to this stuff so I try to listen to somewhat impartial folks who I think understand it, see - simple ;-). As I think I just said in another post, probably too late now to put a finger in the dyke, lord know our lovable elected idiots/criminals will pretend to try.

Been to that site before, I find some of the videos offensive. As far as abolishing the Fed, I believe I've stated I've never understood why they make AND execute monetary policy. I'm not sure simply abolishing it is as simple as it sounds. I'd rather start by having some type of organization responsible for a check and balance on the fed. Same for a gold standard, where's all that gold going to come from. I guess 20 years ago is when I think these kinds of changes would have made sense, but now that we've let then banksters in charge and they've made such a mess of things any change now would probably initiate the anarchy I'm afraid is coming anyway.

Assuming you are speaking about article 1, section 10. I was trying to look this up but I think the supreme court made an interpretation of it that allows printing to take place and it appears to set limits on what the states can do. I've never been good at constitutional law, I think the intent may have been there though. As far as printing goes, not sure it's thin air, I think they have to have treasury auctions to cover what they print...now whether the auctions are on the up and up is a whole 'nother story.

Agreed about the above. I guess I still bristle at the greed is good mentality. But that's kind of what brought about many of the crashes we've experienced. This crash was coming on for 20 years and the people that knew it was coming told the people in the government who could do something about it and they were ignored. The "banks" were taking on incredible risk, the ratings companies were handing out AAA ratings on the CDO products (now affectionately known as toxic assets) like they were candy, AIG couldn't take the hedge bets quick enough and then it all fell apart and they come and say, we've made billions and billions on this scam, now we're in trouble can you help? I almost puke every time I think about it. So they get bailed out, NO ONE GOES TO JAIL, and what is going to prevent this from happening again? That's where I think the gov could help instead of protecting their banker buddies. Let the companies go down, indict the people who knew this was yet another ponzi scheme (GS) and maybe they won't be so quick to do it next time. Instead these same people are going to be paid immense bonuses and probably crank another bubble up again and put the world economy at risk, again. They shouldn't have the power they have to bring the world to its knees, not sure how we prevent that now without gov control. And you are right, the gov are the last people who would be able to do it anyway, between the bootlickers and criminals are the inepts. Latest bill up is a joke. I like how they gave all the credit companies a warning rates would be frozen, gave them time to bump them before the freeze then some are posturing they need to spped up the process because rates are going up...are they kidding? Are they trying to pretend they were too dumb to realize they were giving an early warning to the credit card comps? I remember a couple of months ago Moody's (a rating company) told the media if the US didn't get its ducks in a row it would have to think about reducing it's AAA rating. I couldn't believe it but then someone pointed out it was actually a threat because the gov was making noise about moving away from Moody's service to other companies in light of the fact that Moody's was, at best, faulty in their handling of the CDO ratings. A threat? They should be going to jail for all that they did and then issuing a statement like that. Disagree about voting and the current practices, I know what you mean about the college and multiple candidates but there are alternatives. And I definitely take exception to the comment that anyone might be satisfied after someone is elected. ;-) I guess I'd rather see a popular vote be a popular vote. There are realistically only two candidates that will run, one democratic, one republican. How archaic is it that only the people who feel so strongly about one party or another (liberal or conservative) get to choose who runs? Then the rest of us get to pick between just those two? I have to find some of the alternatives I've run across in the past, I ain't smart enough to think of them but I remember liking some. Okay, maybe I just liked the idea of killing the existing practices. ;-)

Keep checking? I'm hardly ever on here!!!! ;-) Man I can't wait. I still have two bottles of 24 and 16 not even half done. I went to zero nic too soon, mmmmm mentha, man I need it bad!!! Every other mentha vaper better get out of my way when it hits. I'm buying it out!!!! ;-) Any chance of non grape soda as well? You have so many fans, I must try it!!! Edited to add Alucard better back off as well. You're a noob, lemmie at it first, mmmmm, hold on, wiping the drool. Sorry, mentha was my fav and I had to give it up. Of course you and everyone else are welcome to it. <<Ya gotta love how I say that like I have the ability to decide who gets it or not, can you say delusional?>>

That's funny, all I saw was the cheesecake under the new products...I see the maserati link, coming soon?

Hey - as you already know, you've quit. Congratulations. I think one of the main reasons I never could really quit was knowing the itch would always be there. People I know would go back to it, tell me the urge never left, even got worse as the years went by. I'm done with nicotine and now the urge to inhale anything is dwindling. Even if I stop vaping, you can be sure I'll have something around wherever I go just in case. I have so many backups right now because I don't want to go back to nicotine.

Don't gooooooooooooooooooooo. At least I think I got the order in for 2 801 attys. I'll give the janty another spin as a backup when I get them. But now I have my 510s humping good with the mega battery and...playing with my spade which came tonight. Extremely well made. These LEDs I can put up with, very classy item. Charging the batts, vaping and screaming at my netbook which will NOT dual boot!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ooos forgot to add I would love to try the new category (but there doesn't appear to be a non-nic option? Hmmmm... ;-)

I'm still at work - waaaaaah.

man - I think I'll have to get me some of those LBs as well. Even though I'm thinking my spade is in my mailbox right now, I might give the JS another go. Been back on my 510, working great after having atty after atty clog up.