"Editorial"

I must be doing pretty well to be making another entry so soon. I can't but wonder why I'm making so many entries now. Why wasn't I motivated in January? Well I really don't know. Of course if my counter is any indication it must be a good a idea to keep this up. I mean 13 hits in a day! And none of them were even me. I think that's pretty good really. I also sent off 13 emails to other blogs requesting a reciprocal link. Only one has written me back so far, to say no thanks. Now if only we could move on to actually sending me an email :-) (hint-hint).

I did stumble across this story thanks to Drudge Report today however. What it says is some sources in the Middle East are reporting that bin Laden was captured a while ago but news hasn't been released yet because Bush wants to spring the news on us in time for the election. Now personally I see a problem with the whole premise. Firstly I was just thinking about this the other day while watching one of the local shrill liberals on the news channel go on and on about how failed Bush is and how he "hasn't even caught bin Laden". The worst possible thing that could happen now is for bin Laden to be captured between about July and early November. The shrill liberal conspiracy nuts will never shut up for the rest of time about that. And now some middle-east source says bin Laden is in captivity, secretly until such time this news can be shared for maximum political gain.

Now it may make sense to keep the information of the capture secret for a while so bin Laden isn't a maurder for the Middle East types even more than he is already. That makes sense. Seems like there are many more advantages to keeping the news of the capture a secret that there are of releasing the information. Even though Bush is being so pummeled and punished politically for not capturing him. But all that can be second to national security. I can only imagine what we'll find out about the last few years in say 20 or 30 years from now.

I also came across this story thanks to slashdot.org. This one says a large portion of the crosswalk signs in New York City don't actually do anything. Does anybody else ever get that feeling about a lot of things? If I vote absentee, does my vote really go anywhere? How would I know exactly? Or for that matter maybe some on the other end is inspecting each ballot and throwing out the ones with the holes pushed in. I mean I realize in theory this mass placebo isn't really that big of a deal, having dormant cross-walk buttons in place makes more sense than spending the money to tear them out, but it does kind of imply some kind of rats-in-a-maze mentality. Is that really all we are? Rats unaware of the giant experiment we're in, desperately holding on to old habits of pushing a button out of some psychological need to believe we have control over something even if that something is making a sign tell us it's safe to cross the street...I doubt I'm making a wit of sense at this point. But that doesn't matter much.

For any new visitors: this isn't a normal entry. I very rarely if ever link to a news story and then comment on it. You know, just so we're clear.

What else? Well a while back I captured Cowboy Bebop: The Movie via cable premium channel. But I used a high quality and non-stop for the whole movie so I ended up with a 5+ gigabyte MPEG. So the first problem was transferring that file from the computer I use to capture to my main computer with the editor installed. I used HJSplit to split the MPEG into several pieces, transferred them over the network and re-joined the pieces. So that wasn't so hard. I captured the movie a week or two ago, decided to sample it down to SVCD quality for placement on a DVD yesterday. But the file is too big for my chosen editor, Video deLuxe so I found a utility to split the MPEG into six pieces, which I would then re-assemble with Video deLuxe. So I finally get the six pieces and try to import them with the editor only to get some generic error messages: I imported the video but lost the audio portion. I was guessing from the extremely unhelpful error message I received that the MPEG splitter never added any sort of end-of-file signal that Video deLuxe was looking for. But that's only a guess. Oh great! So then I had to search the Internet for a utility to rip the audio from the video clips and save them separately so I could drop the audio into the video, so I'm finally able to export the damn thing as a working MPEG file in SVCD, prime for burning to a DVD.

But I ran into a problem: the utility I found to rip the audio only rips to .WAV format. So for each 903 Meg video clip I had a 4+ gigabyte .WAV file. Well that's too much space to take up in such a short period of time so my HDD was about 80% fragmented. So where am I now? Find yet another utility that will rip the audio in MP3 format instead of .WAV, at least that's my guess for my best choice. I just hope it's worth it and I produce a watch able DVD. I doubt I'll ever watch it even once :-). I was thinking of putting more than just that movie on the DVD, since that movie in SVCD quality would not take up the whole DVD. Perhaps the pilot and two-part final episode of the show? Why do I feel a "why not use VHS for that?" coming on? ehhhh; shutup.

I've now downloaded a new program, Konvertor (which I guess is French) that converts from every possible format to every other possible format. So I just did a test run on the first chunk of the movie and the resulting MP3 was 13.8 megabytes. A four gig wave versus a 14 meg mp3 :-) isn't that amazing? Oh, it isn't. So I'll make an SVCD of each chunk so I have each one, then combine all those files into one long movie. I'm sure this is educational on some level, and I'll be able to use this some where some how.

I still can't believe a person who does and experiences so little can manage to write so much so consistently. And I'm not even gong out of my way to find to stuff to write about. How is this possible? So I hope this entry was half entertaining and enjoying.

  ¶ 1:31 AM 0 Comments

 

"Revelation"

Appears I'm doing a lot more writing lately. What is it with me? I can go 5 weeks without an entry then a whole month with several entries a week. I'm not very consistent am I? I suppose that's good, for a blog. You have noticed the links to your left. I added a link, Albino Black Sheep, to the list. Some how that site always seems to find the coolest things out there. I don't know how they do it. For instance this image made me ROFL: Dean's Non-electable.

Updating this often has advantages and disadvantages of course. On one hand I get a lot more practice and probably more content over-all but what about those long 6 page rants? No more of that for me I guess. Now it's more 2 1/2 pages an entry. Also I often take a while to find a good title, referencing somewhere in pop-culture. If I update often I won't be able to find those. So I'm not nearly as clever as I ever thought I was anyway. But I think I'm going to do the blog like this for a while anyway and see how it turns out.

So what's been going on? What since Tuesday? Well not a terribly lot. I'm still trying to plan out this theoretical business my friend Steve and I have been working on since Monday. I'm starting to wonder if this is really going to work out. We did do a lot of experimenting with the null-modem cable and a crossover Cat5 cable. I never did successfully "network" with the null-modem cable but I did finally open up HyperTerminal on both computers (Steve's and the laptop) and transfer a few files back and fourth that way. Maybe not what we had in mind but it works. The crossover was insanely easy however. I did insist on installing a firewall on his computer as he had just re-installed Windows 2000 and has an always-on cable connection to the Internet. "That's like taking the door of your apartment off the hinges!" I told him. So I put ZoneAlarm on his computer. Well it tries to do a lot for ya instead of letting you decide what you want. So instead of asking "do you want to allow network access" it just says "connection blocked". So I forgot to shut the damn thing down before trying to network. Once I figured that out it was easy to make the crossover cable networking work. We figure we can use this to back up files for customers or transfer files to a computer if there's not other method.

Normally I use Kerio personal firewall however they're latest version, 4 I think, is quite a bad program. It intercepts all web pages you visit and inserts JavaScript to block out the banner ads. Which would be good on its face accept some pages it does so and ends up making a page completely inoperable. So I have to shut it down just to use a normal page, which ruins the whole point of a firewall to begin with. And unless I didn't look hard enough you can't turn the feature off. In the free version I'm using that feature along with pop-up blocking expired after a month or so of use. I need to back to version 3! At least that one worked.

But where was I? Oh right. So we got all that covered. Now all we need is a definitive name, a web site and a first customer. Which we'll probably do for free or really cheap just for the value of the feedback.

Anything else? Well I did watch 2 hours worth of Batchlorette last night. What? What do you mean by that? Well my sister's friend insisted on watching it. I didn't have anything better do last night. I mean besides spend that two hours in my room writing in my blog. What a crazy idea! She kept asking who I thought the Batchlorette would pick. And I kept saying "I don't care!". And I didn't. I was just examining it all to trying to figure out the appeal of it all. The two she had to pick from were these sort of "pretty boys". I kept trying to point out to my friend these guys aren't really like this. This may as well be a fictional show with actors, it would be the same thing. Because the whole time the batchlorette was with the respective guys the camera was on them, and it was a competition after all. What about 6 months from now when the guy's ignoring her and watch football in a stained t-shirt all day? What a joke of show! Then I began to realize that wasn't really the point. The point is to provide a center-piece character for women to project themselves into, and fantasize it's them being courted and fought over by all these men. Oh-my-god. It's porn for women. So that's how they think!

Oh yes one other piece of reality-related tv news for me: anybody see that low-rated, two-episode show called "the littlest groom" brought to you by the minds at the Fox network? No? Well pay attention. The premise is for a "little person" groom to pick try and pick out a wife, choosing between normal sized women and some "little women". It seems I went to high school with one of the "little women". I was probably one of the few who didn't actually know her of course. I didn't do much socializing in high school. In fact I probably had a class or two with her. So I hope you feel special. You're reading the blog of the guy who went to high school with the little women who was on a low-rated reality show-exploiting midgets for fun and profit. Issue a statement to the media. Call Geraldo. Wow, what an amazing sentence.

Also thanks to good old fellow-blogger Justin Blanton I found a pirate album by DJ Dangermouse entitled The Grey Album. Apparently it's some sort of mix of famous songs from The Beatles and popular counterparty "artist" Jay-Z. I've been listening to it for most of the day. I may or may not still be enjoying it. Who wouldn?t like a song titled "I got 99 problems but a bitch ain't one" anyway?

Well I know I haven't done any thing on politics in a while. So I may as well say what I've said a few other times: are the Democrats running for president, or not? They really don't seem to be trying. It's like they already gave up or something. And accusing Bush of going AWOL? What the hell are they thinking? Haven't they seen the pattern over the last couple years since 9/11?! Bill Richardson only became governor of New Mexico by running quite to the right. The Dems lost many seats in the House and Senate in 2002. The pattern is not spinning they're direction. So why don't they trying something else? And more importantly why should I care? Republicans, on the other hand, not much better. Am I the only one who was never convinced Bush was conservative to begin with? He didn't even really run that way. He won't ever be so, so just don't go there.

And this gay marriage thing? Seems like they're hurting they're cause more than they're helping it. Such childish behavior makes me believe they know they're going to lose the election and continue being out power. Anybody without a (D) next to his or her needs only sits back and let them destroy themselves. Don't have to do or say anything. Just step back and let them implode. They can do more to damage themselves than any political enemies could hope for. It is nice to have to people running for president holding each of a diametrically opposed opinion about something like gay marriage for instance. Actually Kerry has said he's against gay marriage, but who knows if he really means it. Could depend on the definition of "against" or something. It is nice to have at least one politician representing each perspective. Right? In this case it's every country on earth, 90% of the population of the USA.

Well I've managed to crash my shell (figure that one out) so I think I'll end this entry now.

  ¶ 4:59 PM 0 Comments

 

"IOssist, no, I do"

Well I've run up against yet another wall in my supposed project. I haven't the slightest idea how to fix it or if I will fix it. You see it was working perfectly was booting off the floppy and with the HDD in. Then all I did was burn the directory from the HDD to the CD and make a new image of the floppy I was using. Then make a bootable ISO of the two things as a combination and put it on CD. Perfect sense right? Then why isn't it working?

Well what I really did was try to get the whole thing working more effectively, with all the drivers etc. I used the device manager to get the names of all the files that made up the drivers for my video and network cards then mad the corresponding directories to be copied to the RAM disk upon boot. But I did something wrong because I get a error about IOSUBSYS being corrupt or the system is out of memory. Ok fine so I go to the CD and try go look at that directory on CD, IOSUBSYS. I do a cd subsys and...invalid directory. Invalid directory?! It's right there!

< DIR > IOSUBSYS

So why isn't it viewing the damned directory? I mean I changed the name, I moved the directory, I tried zipping and deleting all the files in the directory...and I still get the same error message. Why does it dislike this one directory but read on the other ones fine? What is it about that one directory?! Ok so I copied the iosubsys files to one of the stupid directory I could actually switch to and see the contents of then wrote a special batch file to copy just those files to an iosubsys directory on the RAM disk. Ahah, I thought, I'd fooled the system...it'll work now! But no. Same error. So the hell with it! I don't need no stinking drivers.

I did actually change to editing the config on the floppy and use the files on the CD. This is much easier than changing one item, re-making the floppy image, testing, re-making floppy image, burning, testing, repeat a hundred times...so I just use the CD and the write-protected floppy disk. Much better re-doing the bootable-floppy-on-CD over and over.

So now I've taken off everything but everybody favorite five system files, plus wininit.exe (I had a critical system shutdown once, putting that file on the RAM disk fixed it).

Ok now I'm getting IOSUBSYS errors with only the minimum system files available. I think I've about enough DOS to last me the next ten years. Maybe I'll, I don't know, take a break or something. Maybe I'll try making that bootable XP mixture or find some other distraction.

Speaking of distractions, I finally got in touch with an old friend from my time at "the company". He wants to start up a home computer repair business. Personally I have a few reservations about the whole thing. Like perhaps my friend is being a bit too glib about this this whole thing. It's not like businesses are terribly easy to set up and maintain or something. But in case something some how comes out of this I should mention yesterday (the 23rd) was my first meeting about said business. Today we bought our first supplies we figure we would need. Namely a crossover Cat5 cable and a "null modem" cable to be used through the serial port. And also one of those USB thumb drives.

My friend, Steve's his name, let me take home his old laptop to experiment with the null modem cable and see if we could get it working. So I need to work on that anyway really. But damn that sucks. I hate working on something for a week and a half and not succeeding! Maybe if stupid mkisofs actually worked the way it was supposed it might actually work.

So now I'm trying to get the laptop to hook up to my server though the null-modem cable. Doesn't seem to be working though for some reason. No, of course not. Why would anything actually work the way it was supposed to? Ridiculous.

Well it's now been at least 90 minutes since I started working on the null-modem project. And I can no report I have actually connected my server to the laptop, the laptop as the host. I think the secret was turning off any and all security (the laptop has Windows 98, and Windows 98 has no security, unlike Windows 2000).

The two are in fact connected. I can't actually see either computer from the other via the network, but they're connected. So figure that one out. On second thought...don't. Now if only I could Windows 98 to boot from a CD...hah!

Well it's approaching 1:30am now, so I think I'll stop. I would like to to mention that I've noticed my number of hits steadily increasing. An increase corresponding with my frequest updates and also that service that syndicates and notifies visitors of updates. I don't know who you all are or what you find interesting about this site, but I sure hope my unsuccessful attempts at a bootable Windows 98 entertained you. And in case I haven't said it enough...send me an email : ).

  ¶ 1:32 AM 0 Comments

 

"I was unable to find bootimg.bin..."

How about another project update? There's good news and bad news. Bad news is I still don't have a working edition, although I haven't actually worked on it since Saturday about 12:00pm (that's about 32 hours without working on it) so it is to be expected. I have worked on it the past few hours however. I *finally* managed to create a "bootable ISO" via an image of a floppy disk. Then burn it to a CD and almost get Windows to come up.

And how did I do that you should wonder? Well NOT!!! with the free utitlity known as mkisofs. No matter what I did I got the same error message, "mkisofs: I was unable to find bootimg.bin". If I entered a full path, no path, re-named the image, changed the extension...still couldn't find it. What the hell is wrong with that program anyway? And what was my solution? Use a different program :-). Seems rather obvious. I was so set on using the free cdrtools suite of CD writing-related tools. So now I'm using MagicISO. The shareware edition has the limiation of images limited to 300 megs of data. But that's fine, it just motivated me to cut some fat I didn't need to until I finally got it under 300 megs.

But after all that I went through I must have messed something up. Because the bootable image of the floppy didn't work correctly. I thought I had fixed it to the way it should be before hand.

So now I've hooked up the drive back up to the other computer to fix it. everything seems fine now. But what was the problem? I'm still not entirely sure. But if this is any indication of my progress so far I will have this working very, very soon.

Wow this has turn out to be such a really complicated project. It really shouldn't be this complicated. Really. Had I known a week ago what I now know it would have gone a lot faster. Namely utiliy batch files are good, back up copies of registry and other system files are good and mkisofs is very, very bad. Other than that I think I'll be done soon.

I thought I might also talk about something else. For instance I've seen a couple movies lately, good onces. The first was a week or two ago, Identity. I think I liked this movie, though the predictable/unpredictable ending was a bit much. At least one revalation though was pretty good. Finally a widdle-down-to-the-last-murder movie that really does what it does extremely well. One of those psychological things. I think psychological type of movies! Makes me think :)

Then also I saw Lost in Translation. If nothing else you'll learn a lot about a foreign culture. The Japanese one in this case. I would like to have seen it again with the director commentary really. This was one of those movies I just knew had a million things going on behind the scense and between-the-lines I would like to have known about. I'm still not sure how many people would really like that movie. I, though not extatic about it, actually did enjoy it to a degree. A very original and unique film. No cheap re-treads here. So for that at least, I say it's good.
____






  ¶ 2:06 AM 0 Comments

  See you tomorrow...

This will be one of those oh-so-rare short entries, partially to remind myself of something so I don't forget it by tomorrow. And it's almost 4am and I want to sleep now. Thing is I thought I would pretty much done with my Boot-98-from-CD project. Until I got to the boot-from-CD part that is. For the life of me I just couldn't figure out how to make a customized version of a DOS bootable CD. Because you see I could do it with my CD writing software's built-in files created for making bootable CDs. But I needed to use my own set of system files. So I've been spending the last 4+ hours on my one CDRW trying to get this to work. I made an image, ending .ima, of the bootable floppy I was going to use for the bootable CD and extracted the first file, bootcat.bin. But I still (apparently) need bootimage.bin. Judging by the file size (often somewhere around 360KB) it obviously housed the various DOS system files. But how create my own bootimg.bin. I just learned adding a file called bootimg.bin auto-magically creates the bootcat.bin. So finally, after 4+ hours, I just took my image file ending in .ima and changed the name to bootimg.bin and used that with the CD writer software. I burned the CD and tried it not expecting anything. And to my utter and total shock it worked!! A fully customized DOS bootable CD!! UNHEALTHY TANACITY!! Maybe this stupid project is actually do-able?! Have to wait til tomorrow to find out!

Well that's it for now. Last entry’s title is on a sign shown briefly in an episode of Futurama. You know, the one with Al Gore. Ya. Pfff. The city was Kyoto. Like you didn't know that :-).
  ¶ 3:54 AM 0 Comments

 

"The annagram lover's Tokyo"

I'm so glad I'm writing in this so relatively often. Looks like my number of hits has gone up significantly the past couple days. I hope the more frequent updates has something to do with that. You don't email though, do you.

The past few days I've been working on a bootable Windows98 CD. To such an obsessive degree I didn't eat enough and couldn't sleep for pretty much the whole night. The good news is I now know how to do it...but can't due to various minor details. Also I was trying to optimize the install for my sister's computer hardware and in doing so decided to scan her HDD for viruses (first time since we got it: about 18 months or so). Oh look SHE HAS MORE THAN 900 VIRUSES! Well I managed to clean every one of them. Actually she only had a few viruses infecting all those hundreds of files as different instances. The anti-virus caught and cleaned them all however. Then when I hooked up the HDD I'd been operating on all this time to my own computer I got a notice I had a bunch of viruses. I guess my sister?s computer had spread through my network or something. So I cleaned it out. I should probably format and start over. But lets not get off track.

I now know the article Booting Windows From CD-ROM a lot better than I ever wanted to know everything. I pasted it into a word document and started re-arranging the information to make sense, inserting bullets and making tables to keep all the steps straight. Then I opened notepad and started taking notes and putting it all in my own words. And now, finally, after at least 4 days of continuous attempts I actually know how to do it. Boot Windows98 off a CD I mean. I still haven't actually done it yet though. For one thing everything has to go perfectly or the registry will get hosed and you have to start over. Doh! Then once you get it write you're actually booting using just the system files that require write access in Windows98: system.ini, system.dat, user.dat, and win.ini. Also I learned the hard way the order files are loaded in win98: io.sys, system registry, config.sys, autoexec.bat, then win.com and associated Windows drivers.

So I remove the above stated system files (the ones that require write access) from an existing windows98 install and re-install to a new directory, like c:\cdrom\win. Can't have more than one copy of those files or the system will always default to the \windows copy. But the c:\cdrom directory is actually "subst" to another letter, like x:\. So you then have a real install of win98 at x:\win. Problem is keeping all the paths straight. Ya see that directory is aliased as x:\ via the autoexec.bat, which is processed after the config.sys (as stated above). So you have to remember to NOT use x:\ in the config.sys until you're ready. Once you boot via the x:\ install you make a new subst for w:\ pointing to something like c:\cdrom\ramdisk, which will also have a win directory. The copy those relevant write-access-required system files (and only those) to that ramdisk\win directory. Now edit a few system files to point to w:\win instead of x:\win and use the registry to point the "system root" to the w:\ drive. In the autoexec.bat an xcopy command is used to copy from x:\ramdisk\win to w:\win. If everything is done write windows boots from the x:\ drive but gets the system files from w:\win.

Now that I think about it you would have to re-name the existing files in x:\win before rebooting to use those found in w:\win. Why I didn't think of that sooner I don't know.

So that's about as far as I've come thus far. May not sound like much but there is a lot of rebooting, re-installing and possible cursing going on in all that. Took forever to get that down.

The next step would be to create an image of the whole HDD and use the boot sector image of a bootable floppy. Then burn this image to a CD some how. That's the part I'm still working on. Because just dragging-and-dropping surely doesn't work.

Wow, I hope all that wasn't too exciting for anyone. Stay on the edge of your seat!

I'm now going to make a backup of all the files and utilities I've collected via this trip and format and try again. I think writing all this stuff down is actually helping! Helps me to think out everything as I go along here. So annoying being so close! I also found an article at Microsoft’s site called How to Create an El Torito Bootable CD-ROM. Looks to require a little "sector editing" though. Wuhoo! I think I’ll stick to my alternative, poor man’s version. Poor man-unwilling-to-sector edit...

I've actually been writing this entry on and off for the past 24 hours. So far I can actually boot using a registry located in the RAM disk, however for some reason the system swap file isn't created when I boot that way and I don't know why. And what happens when Win98's swap file is 0 bytes? The system is pretty freakin' hosed that's what. I can actually use it at least for a little while before it blue screens. No My Computer and I can't open IE however. And no networking support. Less than I would get via safe mode really. I can't even run a command prompt. Why was I doing this again? Bah. But I guess I'll give a try. I downloaded free suite of tools called cdrtools. Do a Google on it if you're interested. It'll be hard to setup though unless you're a weird CL guy like I almost am.

So I just have to create the bootable ISO image and burn it to a CD to give it a try. I even found a front end for the ISO maker and CD burner in cdrtools. See? Almost a CL guy. Also I'll spend about 12 fewer hours trying to get it to work! So I'll do that tomorrow.

For any other information I didn't get the part time job at the ISP. This is really annoying! What the hell am I doing wrong? Bah! I don't know what I'm going to do now.

Bye the way the title of the last entry I just made up. Can't think of anything. Except today's title. That one I found.

  ¶ 12:37 AM 0 Comments

 

"Substing the truth"

I'm writing again to get rid of any anxiety about the interview tomorrow morning. I think that worked the last time. I think I it helped considerably. I'm also writing because last night my mind was running on hyper drive and I could not fall asleep for the life of me. So writing out what I'm thinking about will help settle my mind. At least that's my theory.

Firstly for anybody out there who know about this sort thing I now have a "site feed" courtesy of blogger and Atom feeds. You can find the XML formatted file here: http://www.etalii-step.com/atom.xml

For the rest of it I did a good job of wasting today. Last night I read about a project to make Windows XP or 2000 boot from a CD. The project is called Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD and looks as if it was reverse engineered from an existing Microsoft product which is limited to a certain audience. I was going to spend all day getting that to work. But I changed my mind.

Instead I came up with a plan. You see I couldn't stand to see my sister and her fiancé use Windows Me, it's such an awful OS. So I absolutely insisted on installing Windows 2000 on their computer. Her computer is only a Celeron and has only 64 Megs of RAM but it's still better than anything you could get from Me. Unfortunately that means a game her fiancé was playing no longer works at all. Well he hasn't actually complained too much about this but I decided it would be neat to have a bootable Windows9x OS on CD along with the game. The goal being anytime he felt like playing the game he simply put the CD in, restart the computer and Windows 98 boots. Directly from the CD. He could then run the game and play it no problem. When he's done he can take the disk out and restart: back to normal Windows 2000.

For this project I found an article entitled Booting Windows From CD-ROM. Unfortunately, if I may say, this article is not very well written. Basically you have to tell the OS that the OS partition is really a "RAM drive", but only for the files than need to write for some reason. That's mostly the registry. So you have to use the SUBST and RAMDRIVE utilities and also break open a binary file with a text editor to make search for a renamed [extremely vital] system file called system.dat (that's one of the files that makes up the registry, for you trivial persuit types). The file to be edited: io.sys (the main OS file in MS-DOS, for the trivial persuit types).

So basically I have to create the whole Windows 98 installation directory hierarchy along with the stuff the OS wants to write to when it boots and put it on the CD. Then I have to have the start-up files create RAM drives and "SUBST" them to different letters.

Ok (for the trivial pursuit types) a "RAM Drive" is a drive letter the OS sees as a hard drive but is really a portion of the system RAM. The SUBST command allows you to assign a drive letter to a directory. For instance if there's an old legacy DOS app that absolutely must have a file accessed from a particular drive letter you can assign that letter to a folder and put the necessary files in their.

So the OS boots up, creates the RAM drives, SUBSTS the RAM drives, copies the necessary files to the RAM drives and finally boots the OS. I'm still having a bit of trouble however. The problem is in the way CD-ROMs are bootable: by emulating and booting from the emulated floppy disk. So the computer has to boot from the emulated disk, copy files to a RAM disk from the emulated floppy disk and some how boot Windows. So how do you boot Windows knowing it will be dependant on a non-existent floppy drive? And what if the OS sees the actual floppy drive and assigns the emulated one to the B: drive?

I'm going to figure it eventually. Actually I haven't even explained all of it yet. I still have to create an image of the boot sector from both a windows 98 floppy and the installed windows 98 to make it all work.

Of course this is all trivial anyway. Even if I some how got this all to work the whole point of this is to run a game on the CD. And what do I need to do to make it run from a CD? Hack the registry; .ini files and hex edit settings? Actually I could SUBST C: drive to W: and install the game to W:\program files\game while 98 is installed on the HDD, then when I put it on the CD it think it's already there on W: anyway. Ok that might work. Of course even in the whole possibility I somehow got ALL that to work...where do the save games go? Hah! The Windows 2000 I have on the machine is formatted in NTFS, Windows 9x doesn't read or write NTFS. Unless I can set up networking and have it save over the network some how. Or to a floppy maybe. Possibly install CD software and burn it to that. I don't know. Too late to create a separate small partition in FAT32.

See this is the "unhealthy tenacity" I often talk about. Most people would probably give up after 6 hours of trying to get this to work. But not me! I think it's a lot healthier to finish a project like this than to give up with out finishing it. I mean if obsessing over something like this to such a degree isn't unhealthy to begin with. Nah!

I think writing this all out has helped a little bit with the general conceptual understanding of how it's going to work.

I suppose I've rambled on enough for night and besides I have to get up in the morning. Hopefully writing this out will make me capable of sleeping.

I, again, made up the title of last entry. Can't think of any one-liners currently.

  ¶ 12:30 AM 0 Comments

 

"Bite my shiny apple"

Well I went to my "study session" with Apple Computer. I probably went on the wrong day or something I'm guessing. I mean turns out Earthlink laid off all their tech support in California so there was like 6 Earthlink guys there. And Earthlink trains employees, which I never got. So stiff competition obviously.

Frankly I have no idea why they called me in the first place. I have hardly any experience in that sort of environment. I am glad I made it past the phone-screening interview though. Just that proves I'm making progress with the job thing. Basically they had the group of 15 to 20 or so introduce ourselves and explain either why we own a Mac or why we'd decide to buy one. I didn't have much to say so I probably didn't do too well. To me getting into Apple would be something like getting into MIT or Harvard or something. I mean they have the *best* tech support/customer service in the world (or so I hear). To be trained by them would be useful forever.

The presenter told us they'd call us within 24 hours if they picked us. Frankly I have no idea what they were looking for or could have got out of the group of us cheering for Apple and going through some stupid OS basics packet. I knew that commercial referencing the book 1984 was first broadcast during the Superbowl in 1984...what do they want?? And why is that such a rarely known fact anyway...I mean seriously. Or why did I happen to remember that...? Ah forget it. I try again when I have more experience.

Also I apparently have a second interview on Monday at the small local ISP. So I'm making progress! If I get that job I wan to work there no less than two years...after that I'll either keep on there or find some place else. I'll have enough experience by then I'm thinking.

So there's the Apple thing. Oh and also they fed us. A study session *and* dinner? What's not to love? So anyway.

I know I must have something else to write about. I can't make any entry less than 5 pages! Don't usually make an entry so soon after the last one either.

I have still continued to play Uplink. All seven or so attempts ended abruptly with me being caught. The game starts you off around March 24th 2010, I read on the Internet the "plot" is supposed to start around mid April. Well I rarely ever made it to April 1st never mind mid-April. Except my last game I made it to April 3rd or 4th. I couldn't believe it. I made it to early April. Then my save game got corrupted. Son of a bitch! I spend all this time obsessively making it through the initial rounds, some how not being caught and...my game gets corrupted. Try as I might I couldn't fix it. Or uninstall it for that matter. So I re-installed it. Then remembered I had to re-install the patch. So once again I'm starting over. I finally get that far in the game and the damned thing corrupts! I've done the same stupid missions so many freakin times! It's getting a little tiring. I think I'm just about ready to shelve this thing for a couple years again. How can there be so many freakin bugs in the game anyway? It's been out a while. Seriously.

Now remember (below) I mentioned politics a little. Well I still believe Kerry is merely a symbolic face to fill in a spot while everybody gets ready for the next election. But what do I know?

I've officially run out of things to write about. And I'm tired. So good night. Also the title of the last entry I just made up. I had to leave so i through something up.


  ¶ 1:27 AM 0 Comments

 

"That's my Apple"

So here I am writing yet another entry. I have a "study session" today it seems. A "study session" at the local Apple computer facility. Why do I even want to work for Apple? I don't have a Mac, want a Mac or have any plans to be a big "Mac guy" in the future. So I thought I would try expressing myself by writing out my thoughts and anxieties before I go.

Also I have noticed via my counter I may have one or two regular visitors. My counter is called NedStat and takes the form of a blue icon with a red line (like a line graph) going through it. This counter gives me "anonymous usage statistics". Things like OS, OS version, browser type, browser version, screen bit depth, screen resolution and what plug-ins are installed. And also the ISP or DNS signature of the last ten visitors. What caught my eye is the same Genuity/ BBN Technologies, United States reported every few days over the past couple weeks. So it's possible more than one person on the same DNS visited my site, or it could be the same person returning to see if I've updated. I really have no way to tell who this person is, how long he stayed, how he found my site and what if anything he likes about this blog. But if I do have even one fan I think that's really quite a good thing.

But where was I? Ah yes Apple. I have heard such great things about the working environment there. And how superior their technical support really is. I mean even if I didn't continue I would get 4 weeks worth of paid training at the world-class customer service company. Normally I'd be willing to pay for that. I'm still trying to figure out this "study session" thing. I mean what does this mean? Am I close to being hired? Do they just want to get the feel for some of the prospects? Is this some sort of psychological test? Am I reading too much into it? I guess I'll find out.

Of course there's also a possibility I could start working at a small local ISP. Not "the one" from before of course, a different one. This one looks like a half sanitary environment with running water and everything! Only it would be only part time. And most likely not pay as much as Apple. But at this ISP I would be one of the first people hired as tech support and so presumably be the first one to move up to full time and possibly even move over to installing networks on-site and stuff like that. Also I would be working with PCs, what I know and love the most.

There are downsides to this ISP however. For instance suppose it's purchased by a larger ISP or some other company. Suppose it goes under. Suppose they change their mind and go back to an out-sourced solution for the tech support. Then I'd be screwed.

And what about Apple? I mean big company, world-class training for world-class quality tech support I could use forever, not likely to go anywhere any time soon. I mean if their hiring lots of people they're likely not going to be cutting back soon. Although I would be the first to go if they did. And I wouldn't likely ever be working with PCs either. But it's a job! Who cares if I don't work with PCs? Macs are computers too; at least I'd be working with computers. Beats working at Blockbuster!

Here I am sounding like I could get either job, or I already have either job. Hah! I could end up with neither by this time next week. And be working at Blockbuster. But I think I should operate on the assumption I could have a choice between the two.

Somewhat paradoxically either company is the about the same amount of time drive-wise in opposite directions from my house. The ISP is towards my old house in the small town I grew up in, Apple the same distance in the opposite direction. It's like symbolism in some weird movie. Have I completed my transition from a rural-minded country person to an a-typical big-city type if I take the Apple job? Am I holding on to my origins too tightly if I take the ISP one? Does any of this make any sense what so ever to anyone?! Bah!

By the way, "Genuity/ BBN Technologies, United States" if you're out there, feel free to drop me a note. The addy is at the left albeit not in the convenient clickable link form everybody's accustomed to. I'd love to hear from you, no matter what you have to say. ANYTHING. Seriously.

I guess I have written out enough. So I'll move to anything else I've been doing. Namely I took out and re-tried a game I've had for quite a while now called Uplink: Hacker Elite. No relation to Half-life: Uplink. I've made a whole bunch of attempts at this game but keep getting caught. There's supposed to be a plot somewhere mixed in but I have yet to get that far. Yeah, it's not very easy. Basically it's a sci-fi game set in the year 2010. You as the main character get this simulated desktop and sign up with this mysterious Uplink Corp. to take random hacking jobs. Whether it's breaking into a computer to copy a file and email it to an employer, break in to delete a particular file, break in to delete all files, or maybe breaking into any number databases to alter a record in some fashion. For instance I've broken into the "Global Criminal Database" and added a crime to a persons records. Then i go back in and delete all the logs so my fingerprints aren't on it. There's also the "Global Social Security Database" and the Global Academic Database". Then there's the "go into this guys bank account and trace a transaction" missions. So I go into this fictional bank account, look at the records to see where he deposited a large sum of money. I then write down the IP and account number of the bank and connect to it. Break into that account, get the name and send an email. I've been doing missions like these for what seems like a really long time now, getting money and upgrading my software and hardware parts. But I keep getting caught. Some how the people with the computer I'm trying to break into have a tracer. My software includes a "trace tracker" which keeps track of the trace's progress by percentage, beeping faster and louder the closer the trace gets.

So I'm on about my 5th or 6th attempt at this game. And let me emphasize again, this is a game. I know there maybe someone who was searching for the real thing and came across this. I'm talking about a *game* here, nothing more. All IP addresses, for instance, are invalid. Containing numbers like 406 or 983 in one of the octets. See? It couldn't be real even if it wanted to be. The only "real" address used is 127.0.0.1, which...well go ahead and try to break into that (and have fun ;-).

I think I'm about as far as I have ever been into the game right now. I don't have that much money and there's a lot of software I need but can't afford, but at least I haven't been shut out yet. Oh and there's no Save As in the game. Once you're "disavowed" you're out, and it's game over. Must start again from scratch! The only solution might be to zip up either the game directory or just the folder with the name of my player and save that some place then when I get game over just go back and extract the zip file, over-writing what's there and theoretically putting me back where I was. Seems like cheating to me. And not even the cool kind of cheating.

I think this entry is pretty boring. I might be putting my self to sleep really.

Ok I guess one more thing. According to this story John Kerry once said the following:

I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations.

I suppose no one is really worried about this? Should we be? Aren't you hippie left-wing types against that sort of thing? Or are you all really secretly trying to work that direction incrementally while talking a good game otherwise?

I'm sure I'm the only one to think this but John Kerry really doesn't seem like a real candidate. I mean post convention people seemed genuinely enthused about Al Gore for his ridiculous populist ideals and even worse environmental and economic statements. But what does John Kerry stand for? Accusing the president of being AWOL? Using "Vietnam" as the end-all excuse for every gaff he has and will commit? Can he never be guilty of single thing forever based solely on being a war hero (which he is)? It just feels like a symbolic put-a-guy-up-there because they feel obligated to but don't really expect to be successful. Does he even want to win?

Well probably he wants to win. But knows he won't. If you watch cable news you'd notice the same phrases perhaps slightly altered over and over again from the Kerry people/anti-Bush people. Obviously they found some best-bet, focus-group tested phrases to use on these shows to try and sway the general public. Just seems so fake to me.

The annoying thing is the Dems could actually win, if they were smart. But they're not. Bush's base of conservatives are really *not* happy about the domestic side things right now. But the Dems continue to say "Bush is radical right wing" over and over. Is that damaging his conservative base that knows otherwise? I doubt it. Would the fence sitters be convinced by such a statement? Probably not. So why keep using it? Well it's not like "Bush is as liberal as any Democrat" would do much good. Nor would cozying up to Bush to turn off the republican base, that would only make him look more appealing to the more centrist democrats I guess. So in the I guess this will all cancel itself out. Based on no one else to vote for conservatives will hold their nose and vote Bush, the small core democrats and anti-war types will vote Democrat, everybody else based on no-one-else and foreign policy issues will pick Bush. So Bush will win. I won't be voting for him. Not unless something changes significantly in the next 9 or 10 months. I'll just leave that part of the ballot blank. What do I care anyway? They're all the same. Kerry will raise taxes significantly however. And suck up to the wussie panzies in Europe. Who will still hate us anyway. But like I said, it matters not. I have no candidate. No one represents me. Conservatives are partyless and totally without representation in government. And I have a feeling there's a lot of people who feel the same way. Too bad Democrats won't figure out a way to exploit this. Too bad for them.

The title from the last entry was from Whose line. The line was "Things that will make this audience go crazy". To that Ryan says, "in 10 minutes we bring out the liquor!" to which the audience went crazy. So Wayne says "I'm the liquor" although clear by his context that should be "licker". Slightly R-rated I guess. Still a good line though. The studio audience liked it too.

  ¶ 3:21 PM 0 Comments

 

"I'm the liquor"

So I'm finally making another entry. At least it hasn't been 4 weeks this time. Not too much has happened except I may finally be getting a job. At least that's what I'm hoping for. I got two more calls for jobs on Monday: one from a Christian radio station and one from a local ISP. And this is besides the call back from Apple Computer I received last Thursday. Still trying to figure that one out. It was only a phone-screening interview (at least they told me that up front). I tried to let my talkative, personable personality shine through but it's hard to explain how I left "the company" to employers. I submitted my resume to apple like 4 months ago ya see. I have since removed all mention of that unfortunate experience from my resume. But the Apple guy already knew about it so I had to go into it. That probably cost me the position. They may not have called me at all had it not been there however.

Now about the other two places: Ok so I'm not actually that Christian. It's not like I'm trying out for bible study class or something. I just want to be the IT specialist type. I'm more the agnostic when it comes to religion. Or couldn't you tell from the language I use commonly? The phone interviewer for her asked me what I would say if a caller asked me to prey for them. And I said I would say yes, but I didn't say it very well. I'm still not sure the relevance. I mean I realize the environment I'll be in I'll be surrounded with a particular environment and if I am to at all interact with people it's only expected it'll come up at a Christian radio station but seriously. I don't know if I'll get that one.

So that just leaves the local ISP. From the extremely extensive description of the job it appears too much more than merely answering a phone for 8 hours straight every day. I might get to interact and help people in person. Brain exercise from more than one angle! So I have an interview for that on Thursday. Apparently all they had left was some sort of part time position, which is fine to start out anyway. I wanted to take an "ethical hacking" class on the college for the second nine weeks anyway.

So I *hope* to be employed soon. For the love of all that is holy I need employment! I describe my current situation as "a week from blockbuster". As in I'll be working at blockbuster inside of a week if I don't get a damned job. See my rational was I can say "yes, start immediately!!" to any employer as opposed to doing the polite "two week notice" thing most employers seem to expect. Also I'm a little trapped at home right now. Because if I don't have a job my Dad will say "why don't you have a job" but if I get some generic job like blockbuster he'll say "why did you take that job? I told you to get one with benefits!!". Of course he doesn't seem to remember saying the other statement when he's telling me any one of those statements. So it's lose-lose. Although Dad has been very mellow and much nicer the last month and a half or so. No money sucks any way so irregardless I'll be at Blockbuster soon if I don't have a real job.

Now about the stuff that pissing me off. I think I watch TV too much. It's you know, pissing me off. Like Bill Mahr for instance. He's so high-and-mighty; so full righteous indignation about how "smart" he is and "stupid" the president is. And yet on his show he's talking to a southerner about the civil war and states that war had the sole purpose of putting an end to slavery. OH MY FUCKING GOD!!!. How can he be THAT stupid?!?!? The Civil War had NOTHING to do with slavery at the outset. That fucking idiot is SO FULL OF SHIT!

Ok perhaps I should take a breath. Ya see it's very easy to prove the Civil War was not about slavery. Not at the outset anyway. The president at the time, Abe Lincoln, wrote a doctrine entitled "The Emancipation Proclamation" effectively freeing all the slaves as the union army came upon them. However this doctrine was not authored until several years into the War. So you see the Civil War was not fought souly to "stop all slavery" as he said. It was actually to prevent the southern states from breaking away from the union to form "The Confederacy"; Abe and congress thought was a bad idea, providing us the quote "United we stand, divided we fall". That's what he was referring to. So there's your proof about the Civil War. Simple dates, mathematics and...common-fucking-sense. Am I the last one to actually know this?

This reminds me of this memory from high school. I was in this Government/Econ class, it was towards the end of the school year (I was a senior). The teacher was extremely eccentric and did things in weird ways. He was asking the class different random quiz questions and rewarding correct answers with donuts. When he asked the question "what was the true reason for the civil war?" I raised my hand and said, "to prevent the southern states from succeeding from the Union". All my classmates seemed rather apathetic about me and my answering but the teacher looks at me and says "this is exactly right". The shock and gasps of the classmates was quite palpable. But why was everyone so shocked I could actually retain one minor little random question like that? Though minor it may have been it's still one of those few positive memories I have from high school. And I do remember enjoying that donut.

Now then how about I look something up I know is probably going to piss me off but do it anyway. I'm going to visit the web site of that really scary commie, Dennis Kucinich. Ok first I'll try to think of what he might say then I'll visit his site and see how close I came.

Lets see. I'm expecting something approaching a document from Mao Tse Tung himself. Endless dribble about the poor and upper classes, the evil rich, the infamous "socioeconomic conditions" and the endless prattling about raising taxes and distributing money evenly to everyone...like communists. I personally find that class warfare the most offensive thing imaginable, much worse that everyone's apparent universal villain of the South in the 19th century (point and hiss). Ok let?s check out his site and see what it says...

My I am some what surprised by what I came across. It wasn't nearly as scary as I would expect. As with all the Democrats these days every line seems universally focus group tested and approved. Is there even one legitimate thought on that entire web site? I imagine not. At least he does come out and say, "I'm going to be raising everybody's taxes". He also goes on about environmental policy (e.g. socialism) and the Kyoto treaty (e.g. socialism) and a number of things.

I found his "department of peace" rather humorous. So we're not interested in defense any more? Just peace under all circumstances? I really liked the following quote:

Domestically, the Department of Peace would address violence in the home, spousal abuse, child abuse, gangs, police-community relations conflicts and work with individuals and groups to achieve changes in attitudes that examine the mythologies of cherished world views, such as 'violence is inevitable' or 'war is inevitable'. Thus it will help with the discovery of new selves and new paths toward peaceful consensus.

Shall we try to cut through the euphemisms and translate this paragraph? So this new governmental agency of "peace" would what? Look into every household? Solve every personal problem? How would it "address" police-community relations? Is that code for "take away all authority from police" and "never, ever arrest a minority again"? And what is this "mythologies of cherished world views" about violence and war being inevitable? Who thinks that?

I should mention at this point (and I'm assuming he's referring to the more conservative view) that this is not accurate. Rather we think a strong defense and occasional show of force actually deters aggressors, thus avoiding violence. Occasionally this proposed strong defense takes the form of force and violence. But the best and most proven method of *avoiding* violence is a strong show of force and a strong defensive stance. For instance do you think Palestinians would continue suicide bombing Israel if Israel flattened an entire section of the Palestinian territory every time one happened? But on with the translation.

Discover of "new selves"? What the fuck does that mean?! New paths toward peaceful consensus?! Pfffff. I think means locking the population in rooms for "new thinking seminars" to quiet all dissenting voices about strong defenses and deterring attacks. If I had to guess.

Then there's this quote:

"Its work in violence control will be to support disarmament, treaties, peaceful coexistence and peaceful consensus building. Its focus on economic and political justice will examine and enhance resource distribution, human and economic rights and strengthen democratic values."

See I knew he was a commie. Why can't he just come out and say the things he believes? Focus on economic and political justice?! I think we can all read between the lines. Enhance resource distribution? Go ahead, figure out what that means in real words. He wants to completely socialize the economy, establish some sort of 1940s era soviet style production method. He may as well say, "transform the United States to the socialist utopia worker's paradise" for God's sake. But he just can't come out and say so can he? Even though he's getting less than 1% of the voters in all areas and has nothing to lose by coming and saying what he thinks in no uncertain terms.

The only the last thing to say is my question of Democrat's constant contention they're superior when it comes to "education". What that real means is "we've been purchased wholesale by the teacher unions and will continue to support the union leaders no matter what". Another between-the-lines sort of a message. If Democrats/liberals were really so great in "education"; the learning kind not the teacher union pandering kind; the San Francisco/bay area/Marin County would have the best educational system in the whole world. So would California for that matter. Governor Davis had a blank check, a whole every possible high elected office held by one of his co-horts. So what's the excuse for the worst educational system in the whole country? I could say the same for Washington D.C., who's had nothing but liberals running it for many, many decades. And yet it also has the worst educational system imaginable. But does anyone point this out? For some reason not. I hope I made some sense in this posting.

The last title was a quote from Whose Line. The episode that should be famous involving Richard Simmons acting "a little gay". I won't go into it. Lets just say it wasn't subtle and it was extremely funny.

  ¶ 12:21 AM 0 Comments