All done :)...or not?

I've got everything I wanted re-installed now, and pretty much everything I didn't want kicking around anymore is gone. It is nice to have a lean, mean, clean-running machine again. I am now back in business as my e-mail, instant messengers, Quicken and even World of Warcraft are back to a usable state.

Mind you, I'm now becoming somewhat more of a geek because when trying to figure out (for example) how to back up my Palm stuff pre-wipe so that I'd be able to keep what information from there I wanted to keep, or (for another example) how to get the tabs in my new Firefox browser to behave with bookmarks the same way I had them behaving with Netscape pre-wipe (yes, I now see Netscape as a yucky browser, but I was a little cheesed when I thought I wouldn't be able to get my bookmarks to work the way I wanted them to in Firefox...problem solved now, though), I was browsing some forums here and there and came across advice on things like how to get a better music player for my Palm or how to configure Firefox with an amazing amount of functionality and customization. Honestly, I don't think I will be doing much in terms of customizing/"souping up" Firefox, but the idea of getting a different music player for my Palm is very tempting as I don't like the way my current one (the Palm version of RealPlayer) organizes music files. Looks like my project to clean up my hard drive, while (pretty much) finished, has led to creating some more work for me, but it shouldn't be too much so that's okay.

I've also finalized my decision to take down my old web site. That site was really more or less created as a cry for a kind of attention that I no longer feel the need for. Also, while it was nice to get the odd e-mail from other researchers (and "lay people" interested in the subjects of my research) in response to stuff that I posted on the "My chemistry research" part of my site, it turns out that I'm really not that interested in answering a lot of questions about that research because answering such questions is a lot of work (and requires a kind of thinking that I'm not up for right now). I will still likely put up the odd web site for particular occasions (for example, I will likely continue the tradition I've had the last few years of sending an e-mail out around Christmastime to family and very close friends containing a link to a web page on which I outline my wish list), but lately my reaction to the fact that I have my very own Google-able website has turned from being one of "Cool, my site pops up on Google!" to one of "Oh, great, someone is e-mailing me about my paper on triclosan [a controversial anti-bacterial agent that my paper more or less says should be avoided] again...I really don't have the energy to join them in their fight against triclosan [or explain to them that I was just a third-year undergraduate when I wrote that and that they should probably look at the sources I cite rather than my paper for reliable information--though I could be wrong on that score; maybe I don't give myself enough credit :P], so I'm just going to ignore this e-mail for now and maybe I'll get back to them about it later [yes, later...]." So, for now, the website is coming down...though I will consider publishing that paper in a student science journal as my professor suggested, if only to give the masses a copy of it to use in their continuing fight...just as long as that's the last bit of input I have to give on the subject for the time being. I do want to save the environment, I really do; I just don't want to have to be the science geek who does all the hard research on it at the moment. Man, that feels like a big cop-out, especially when I really did enjoy the air quality research I did the past three summers. I guess this is one area where I don't really want to be the leader, though I would gladly stand behind (and/or work for) the geek who is willing to be that leader (and tell me what to do to get the data to support them so I don't have to figure it out for myself).

Well, don't I feel pathetic now :P. Pardon me while I either go contemplate this new revelation of this aspect of myself to myself or go keep myself busy with other things so I don't have to think about that for a while. Perhaps I need to rethink this or maybe I just need to come to an acceptance of it, I don't know, but it coming to mind at a time in my life when I am thinking "what's my calling of the now"-type thoughts means that I don't really want to just brush it off quite yet.

What, you thought a post starting off with my continued report on my wiping of my hard drive couldn't be deep ;)?

Phase 2 complete

More successes to report:

• hubby and I (as in he looked after this until I got home from work last night) ran Windows Update last night as much as it took to get my copy of Windows fully up-to-date and protected with all the latest security patches; all seems to be well on that front now
  
• my video card and sound card are working well with their new drivers (hubby installed the video card; I sort of installed the sound card, but Windows Update actually did it for me)
  
• I have re-installed Norton Antivirus and it has recognized that I already had a subscription to the updates service, so I didn't have to pay anything
• I have re-installed Firefox and it is working well (though soon I will have to go through the advice some people left me on the MozillaZine forum to figure out how to configure a particular aspect of it--to do with bookmarks and tabbed browsing--the way I want it...hooray for open source software that can be freely "tweaked" like this :)!); I have also gone through all the bookmarks files I had found on my computer pre-wipe (and saved to go through), deleted duplicate entries between those files and re-bookmarked the very essentials; I will decide later what non-essentials will earn the right to be placed back in my new bookmarks file.
  
• I have reinstalled both my spam blocker and Mozilla Thunderbird and they are working with each other just fine; it looks like I managed to keep pretty much all my e-mails and settings for both from their pre-wipe stages, and I've also implemented a new way to organize my e-mails (and I think I am liking it so far).

I still have to reinstall my instant messengers, all my Palm software, Quicken (and make sure I managed to keep all my profiles/files/settings/etc. for all of the above), and Microsoft Office (besides some little fiddly things like my printer drivers and my spyware remover), and I'll also need to update World of Warcraft to the most current version (and install Ventrilo so I can talk to my WoW guildmates with my headset). Phew...okay, back to it!

Phase 1 complete

My husband called me earlier today to report the following successes:

• my hard drive has been successfully formatted
• Windows has been successfully reinstalled on my computer
• my backup information has been successfully put back on my backup partition (which he had copied to his backup partition when it became evident that my backup partition was also going to need to be wiped as part of the overall wipe of my hard drive)
• my computer can connect to the Internet

This means that when I get home (yes, I am at work right now, but this is one of those periods at work where I am waiting for someone to give me a game sheet to enter the stats from or something else to do and am allowed to entertain myself in the meantime), I will be able to download and reinstall all my programs and check to see if I'll be able to re-integrate my backed-up settings/e-mails/etc. with the new installation of all my programs. That's the really nerve-wracking part. I mean, anyone can wipe their hard drive clean, reinstall Windows and start fresh. The question is: did I lose just the information that I wanted to (all my unused files/programs/etc. that led to me wanting to do a wipe in the first place), or will I find myself banging my head on my desk with a big "NOOOOOO!"?

I'll let you know which of those two options turns out to be reality in a day or two :).

Today's the day

Today it will happen. I will finish backing up the little bits of things I have yet to back up (and I know where they are and I have a plan for the backing up of those things) and then I will get my husband to wipe my hard drive, take two of my three partitions and make them into one, reinstall Windows, and get the Internet working on my computer again. Then will begin the process of reinstalling the programs that I do use and getting my settings/e-mails/etc. back from the backup drive and onto my computer and reintegrated with the appropriate programs. I am excited but I am scared. I am also working tonight starting at 4 p.m. (which means leaving the house by 2 p.m. in my current public transit state) so I won't be around to see much of the stuff that I'm going to ask my husband to do for me. This is also kind of scary (not that I don't trust him; it's just kind of like leaving your sick child in the hands of someone else while you have to be elsewhere for a while) but really there's nothing I could do to help him in the event that something bad happened anyway. I don't have those kinds of computer smarts; he does. Bye for now, everyone...hopefully I will be reporting a successful reinstallation of everything by the end of tomorrow.

Taking a deep breath and diving into gigabytes of dustbunnies.

I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna take the plunge.

I'm going to wipe my hard drive.

Every so often I notice that my computer is not the lean, mean computing machine it used to be. I usually notice this when I am playing World of Warcraft (which, by the way, I have been away from for days now--though I do intend to go back--so I can't be a totally lost case kind of addict ;)) when my character suddenly pauses about every 5 minutes or so in the middle of running around and simply freezes on my screen, leaving me to wonder what monsters are tearing me apart during this lag spike where I cannot control my character nor see what is happening to her and am thus totally helpless ("Monsters don't kill people...lag does"). This is part of what has spurred my latest "well, I guess it's time for a wipe" decision. I want my computer to be faster again.

The other thing that has spurred my decision is that I have a lot of stuff (files and programs alike) on my computer that I really don't need anymore. This does contribute to the lack-of-fastness (otherwise known as slowness, I guess) mentioned above, but it also leaves me scratching my head and thinking, "Well, yeah, I did want to respond to that posting that Jehovah's Witness guy put on the religion area of ScriBE back in high school, but I never got around to it, I no longer have access to ScriBE, and that was ten years ago now...do I really need to keep his original message on my hard drive?" I am also now completely finished my undergraduate degree, so keeping copies of old assignments from high school, Bible college and even my B.Sc. on my hard drive seems a little unnecessary. I have actually gone back and looked at some of these old files at times, so I will be burning myself an archival CD rather than getting rid of the files completely...but when it comes to the hard drive, it's time for a wipe. It's time for my computer to get ready for teacher's college with a metaphorical clearing off of the desk. It's time for my computer to be clean again.

The next paragraph is for the uber geeks out there. The rest of you can feel free to skip it.

This time around, I'm not just doing a wipe...I'm also becoming a switcher! No, no, no, I am not switching to a Mac from a PC or anything else that drastic. However, after having been a loyal Netscape user for years and years, I am jumping ship. No, no, no, I am not becoming a regular Internet Explorer and Outlook/Outlook Express user...I am not so foolish as that. I am instead switching from Netscape Browser to Mozilla Firefox, and I am switching from Netscape Composer to Nvu. In other words, I am supporting open-source software. My decision on this has come about mainly because I am unhappy with the way I have had to operate since Netscape moved away from having a complete suite of programs (known as Composer) and decided to only continue producing a browser. I understand their reasoning in a way; Netscape looked around, saw that even Mozilla had moved away from the "package deal," and decided to do what everyone else was doing, which was producing only stand-alone products. However, when they went from Netscape Communicator 7.2 to Netscape Browser 8.0, I was suddenly without a mail client. Thank goodness someone on the Netscape communities forum mentioned Mozilla Thunderbird (which I immediately switched to, found to be exactly the same as my old Netscape Mail client but without the Netscape branding, and loved). When Netscape went from Netscape Communicator 7.2 to Netscape Browser 8.0, I was also suddenly without a WYSIWYG web page creator that I liked. I do know a fair bit about HTML (or at least "old school" HTML) and can produce a web page using source code if I really have to, but it's so much easier to use a WYSIWYG program for the bulk of the work and then just go in and "tweak" the code the way I want it (and the reason I liked Netscape Composer was that it had tabs you could use to switch quickly between the HTML code and the WYSIWYG versions of editing your webpage). So I ended up keeping multiple versions of Netscape on my computer: Netscape Browser 8.0, the entire Netscape Communicator 7.2 package (because I didn't know if Composer would run outside the package), and both entire packages of Netscape Communicator 7.1 and 7.0 (I think...the install/uninstall thingy in Windows' Control Panel wouldn't let me get rid of them even though they continued to be listed on the uninstall list, but it is possible those packages got overwritten when I upgraded to 7.2). That is a lot of extra weight to keep on my hard drive simply for the sake of having a WYSIWYG editor that I like. Someone on the Netscape communities forum mentioned Nvu back when I "upgraded" to Netscape Browser 8.0, but when I downloaded it and tried it back then, I didn't like it. I just downloaded and tried it again, though, and I don't see anything I can't do with it that I can do with Composer (either the one thing that I think bugged me about Nvu has been resolved with an add-on package or I never saw/tried that add-on package the last time I tried Nvu), so there is now no reason for me to keep Netscape Communicator 7.2/7.1/7.0 on my computer. I'm making the switch. Furthermore, Netscape Browser sometimes gives me problems with little fiddly things here and there; I always thought that this was because its being mostly based on Firefox technology was making it disagree with certain web pages (despite the fact that changing Netscape into Internet-Explorer-emulating mode didn't help some of my problems and that even using the actual Internet Explorer program didn't help some of my problems on my computer but did fix the problem if I went to my husband's computer, which doesn't have any Netscape products installed on it), but I just found out today that Mozilla Firefox doesn't give me those same problems. Okay, so it's not Firefox that's the inferior product--it's Netscape! Partly because of this, and partly because I have always wanted to make a switch (that wasn't to Internet Explorer) ever since Netscape Browser 8.0 came out (I was a little cheesed by the dropping of the Communicator suite, can't ya tell :)?), I am making the switch away from Netscape and towards open-source (mostly Mozilla, but Nvu isn't made by Mozilla) products. Thank you, Netscape, for cheesing me off sufficiently that I was driven to find better products, which I will now enjoy greatly (new toys? hooray!).

Alright, that's enough blogging for now...I have backing up of files and burning of CDs to do to prepare for the wipe. Hopefully this time I can avoid wiping the hard drive only to fill it back up with the same old junk again.

If you don't hear from me for a while, just assume the wipe went very, very wrong ;). Wish me luck!

Good news at work...and a little rant about "knitting"

Well, there aren't going to be any more day shifts at the Ice Gardens for a while. At least probably not until August, unless we get new owners in the meantime (which could apparently happen pretty much any day now) and they decide we need to be there in the daytime. Anyway, this does cut back on the number of shifts available to give the six of us who work the desk. My boss called me up to her office today to explain the situation to me. She's decided to split the shifts that are available in the remainder of July between only three people. Guess what? I am one of those three people! This is also the first day my boss has been back at work after having been away for about three weeks, and apparently she has heard good things about me, so that's encouraging. She did also hear about my "knitting" on the job, but like I've said before, everyone understands that the day shifts are pretty much empty of something to do (and that the evening shifts can be very quiet at times, too, though not for the whole shift or there would be no need to have a Guest Services department at all), so that didn't seem to bother her at all (it only came up because when I was up in the office, one of the guys there jokingly basically told her I'd been a horrible employee during her absence...and asked me if I'd finished making him his scarf yet). So...they like me, they really like me! My boss also made me one of the three people who will be getting shifts because 1.) I am one of the people who have given her the most availability, and 2.) of the six people who work our desk, only two of us don't have another job, and that includes me; she feels less bad about cutting the hours of the people who have another source of income and worse about cutting the hours of the two of us who are relying on the Ice Gardens for our school $/etc. In any case, I am feeling encouraged by this turn of events...even if it does mean I'll only have evening shifts again for a while. Oh, and the three of us who will be on the schedule will pretty much have nights that are "our" nights, so I'll be having a more regular and predictable schedule for a while, hooray! So far the plan is that my nights will be Monday, Thursday and Friday, but I'll have to see what the official word is when I get the new schedule. I have to say I will miss the day shifts, since they had come with the ability to get paid for doing pretty much anything I wanted to do (so long as I could do it at the Guest Services desk) due to lack of business, but I do think it is better to get paid for an honest day's work after all. I'll just have to do my crocheting elsewhere.

Speaking of crocheting...I have to say that since I started working on my afghan again and doing it at the Ice Gardens, I have been amazed at how many people do not know what crochet is...or even what an afghan is (where "afghan" is not a reference to an Afghani or anything/one else from Afghanistan)! Pretty much everyone who has seen me working on this project has asked me, "What are you knitting?" [emphasis mine, of course]. I think there were only two exceptions and they were both female (and I think both were attending the real estate college that runs some classes out of rooms they rent from the restaurant upstairs). Okay, people, for clarification: knitting uses (at least) two straight pointy needles (though sometimes they are joined by a cable, granted); if you see only one needle being used and it has a hook on the end, you are looking at someone who is doing crochet. Also, an afghan is a small kind of blanket...this one will not really be big enough to call an actual blanket, but it will be fine to put over one while one is watching TV or even napping. Yes, the piece you see me working on at the moment may only be a few inches wide, but there are seven strips in the afghan I am making...and the one I'm working on now is strip number five. If I do two rows a day (which I'm doing pretty good at so far), I'll be done by the end of the first week in August, and maybe even sooner. It is true that I have been working on this afghan on and off for the last ten years, but I am almost done and this is the most consistently I've ever worked on it since the first time I put it aside, so I think I really am going to finally finish it this summer, hooray! Besides, with four-and-a-half strips out of seven already done, it is too late to call it quits and toss it out.

Well, that's it from me for now. Good night, everyone (as she studiously avoids looking at the time since she knew she got home from work when it was technically morning)...

Oh, by the way, I know I haven't added categories to my more recent entries yet. I'll do that, um, later...yes, later.

Happy Canada Day!

So it's Canada Day today. I had intended to celebrate the day by going to a fun "share your culture" event our church is putting on, including food and music and games from various countries that people from our church are from. That didn't happen, though; I have decided to do my next road test in Aurora, and my dad decided today would be a good day for us to drive out there and see what driving in Aurora is like (see, many years ago I tried to do a road test in Oshawa, but Oshawa is so different from Scarborough that I got very, very nervous when we went out to explore the roads there on the same day as my road test, and that nervousness is likely what made me fail that road test on the way out of the examination centre's parking lot and led to me giving up on driving for many years). Well, we headed out for Aurora at about 10:45 a.m., stopped for a Harvey's lunch at about 12:30 p.m. or so after doing some driving around Aurora, then headed back to Scarborough and got back here at about 1:40 p.m....not too long before the cultural event was scheduled to start, and I wasn't in a going-out mood anymore...I'd had my going-out for the day. Anyway, I still feel like we celebrated Canada Day because we got to see parts of the country that we don't normally see, even if they are practically in our backyard...and they are really nice parts, full of lots of trees and other greenery...and lots of roads on which I am allowed to go 80 km/h (the fastest I can go with my G1 license), woohoo! (Oh, by the way, Emma, I woulda stopped to see ya but I didn't think my dad would be keen on it. When I get my license, though, I still fully intend to come see ya sometimes! I can also see why you moved out there; it is sooo nice in Aurora.) Okay, yes, I do still intend to walk places rather than drive where that is practical, but it is not practical when it comes to going to Aurora, so I will enjoy the fast roads when I can get 'em :).

Something else I did today: I got a new bed! Well, not really. Martin and I have noticed that our boxspring keeps slipping through the bedframe lately, so we decided to fix that, but since we were going to be moving the mattress and boxspring to do this I decided we might as well go ahead and try the idea I've had for a while of converting our bed from a canopy bed to something a little more, um, canopy-less. The canopy bed I bought us ages ago has turned out to be cheap as the side rails have developed a noticeable bow, though that could possibly be due to our having turned the screws too tight when we put it together or our accidentally sitting/stepping on the curtains sometimes (which pulls on that rail) rather than the bed being cheap, too. Still, next time I decide to try a canopy bed I will look for side rails that are all one piece rather than two that fit together (if those even exist). Anyways. The curtains turned out to be not as romantic an idea as I'd dreamed years ago that they would be (or maybe my choice of navy blue curtains to go with our sheets/comforters/etc. was a bad idea, who knows) and they kept getting in the way of our feet/vacumn cleaner/etc. (yeah, I thought of shortening them, but I'm too lazy to do that or even take them to an alterationist, and that wouldn't fix the problem of them not being as romantic as I'd imagined, either), so down they came. This bed came with these globe-shaped decorations that were supposed to go at the tops of the posts, but we couldn't get them on in the canopy setup as our ceiling is too low; now that we've taken down the half-posts that you use to make the bed into a canopy bed, though, the globes fit on the headboard and footboard that we left attached to the bedframe, and the bed looks really nice. I think it may even feel more grown-up. The bedroom certainly feels bigger now that you can see from wall to wall in both directions, and it is brighter, too, now that the pot lights on each side of the bed are no longer kept by the curtains from reaching the other side of the room. Maybe I will take a picture and post it, if I ever get my digicam back from Jen. Anyway, I'm happy, and I did a thorough vacumning in there (I even did under where the bed normally is while the mattress and boxspring were flipped up), so that has made my day. Go us (as in me and Martin, who fixed our mattress-slipping-through-the-bedframe problem and helped me with everything else)! I still have some clutter in there to work on, but that is the story with the rest of the house, too (especially the living room, which is the room I want to work on having less of a dorm room/rec room feel the most)...baby steps...I'll get there eventually, bit by bit.