Bad news all round

As I foreshadowed yesterday, my computer’s in Launceston being worked on. So I’m writing this on Sweetheart Vivienne’s MacBook Pro. It’s a lovely computer, but I can’t find my way around it too well. And currently I don’t have the time and patience to learn. The upshot of all this is that there’s no compendium today. And, I reckon, I won’t be able to return to usual blogging until my computer comes back. I don’t know when that’ll be. Maybe on Monday. Who knows? The computer repair people can’t, or more likely won’t, tell me. I’m just fed up with this whole computer saga. It seems like it’ll never end.
A quick update on the effects of the heavy rain 10 days ago. The Marakoopa Cave system is closed to the public until further notice. And in the Great Western Tiers mountains the rain caused a major landslip– which is visible from the Mole Creek road – that’s apparently wiped out the Westmorland Falls walking track. And it’s rumoured the river’s been diverted by the landslip and/or the trees felled by it. So the Falls may be gone forever. Such sad news. Sweetheart Vivienne and I love that track and those Falls. We’ve done the Westmoreland walk many times, and we’ve taken lots of family and friends on it too.
P.S. I’ll post some photographs after my computer returns home.
P.P.S. Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

List: 'Top 10 downloads for 2010'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. At the end of my ‘List Friday’ post two weeks ago, I promised – Scout’s honour – that I wouldn’t subject you to any more ‘best of 2010’ lists [1]. I’m a man of my word. Usually. Who said that promises were made to be broken? Maybe it was me. Anyway, computers are still on my mind. So please forgive me. For today’s list, courtesy of cnet.com is ‘Top 10 Windows downloads of 2010’ [2] It’s a countdown list – from 10 to 1. The most interesting thing about this list is that half the items on it – numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 to be precise – are security programs. So self-evidently Windows users are concerned, if not preoccupied, about computer security. Contrast this list with its cnet sister (or brother, I don’t care) list: ‘Top 10 Mac downloads of 2010’ [3]. On this list none – that’s right, zero – of the items are security programs. Ho hum.

P.S. Talking of computer programs, my new computer came without a program that should’ve been pre-installed on it. I’ve downloaded it, but I can’t install it because it needs to go onto a specific hard drive partition which currently is too small. So a courier’s taking the computer to Launceston. Almost certainly the hard drive will need to be formatted and Windows re-installed. So when I get it back, whenever that may be, I’ll have to download, install and configure my programs from scratch. Ho hum again.

Stuxnet and me

Computers. These days they’re on my mind. Indeed,they’re preoccupying it. And, like most topics I put my mind to, the more I delve, the less I understand. Also I’m fully aware that, delve as I do, delve as I must, I no more than scratch the surface of the world’s computer (and computing) knowledge base. If that. I don’t know if there’s a word signifying a person whose computer knowledge is, at most, a tad above zero. But if so, then that’s me. Set against this background, for months now I’ve been intrigued by the Stuxnet worm [1]. This article in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post article summarises the latest about Stuxnet [2]. It says Stuxnet’s a vehicle of cyberwarfare. Almost certainly its target’s Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. And it’s so sophisticated it likely came from one or more governments. Cyberwarfare’s a smart way of achieving strategic objectives. Because compared with conventional warfare it’s inexpensive in financial terms, and it doesn’t expose soldiers and civilians to physical risk. Of course it can be responded to by cyber-retaliation. And/or, perhaps less likely but not impossibly, physical retaliation. If so, that’ll probably be met with more cyber-retaliation – likely with vehicles more sophisticated and devastating than Stuxnet. As new Stuxnet developments and theories emerge, I become more intrigued. But, WikiLeaks notwithstanding, I doubt the whole Stuxnet story will ever reach the public domain. Why should it? And who’d fully understand it? Ho hum.

Farmdoc's blog's 1000th post; and the big wet.

This week there’s no compendium. What with trying to extract data from my old computer’s dying hard drive, and dealing with the daunting task of downloading and installing programs on my new computer, I had no time to compile a compendium. Oh, and there’s the matter of the rain. Between Wednesday and yesterday my rain gauge registered 173.5 mm. Almost all of it came in the 24 hours to 3 p.m. yesterday. Mole Creek village’s main street was under water for a time, and closed to all vehicles except 4WDs. One wag altered a sign to read ‘Mole River’. Some small bridges were washed away. Sand bags were used to protect the hotel and the post office. Us? We were fine. We had a waterfall down the gully in front of our house, and the resultant river flowed through the adjacent paddock. It was charming. Our house, being elevated, stayed dry. Sweetheart Vivienne and I worried about our 1km driveway. We needn’t have. For it was fine. No washouts at all. The creek lapped at our bridge (picture). But it caused no damage. So all in all we were lucky. We’re hoping for calm weather ahead, i.e. no wind to blow down trees whose roots the rain’s loosened. In any event, Mole Creek’s rain/flood’s trifling compared with Queensland’s. Those poor poor people.

P.S. Today’s the 1,000th post on Farmdoc’s Blog. I’m sorry it’s not about something nice.

P.P.S. Finally, I wish you, dear Farmdoc’s Blog readers, a wonderful week.

The moral? Read it.

‘The writing’s on the wall.’ This idiom derives from the biblical story about Daniel who reads the handwriting on the wall that predicts the end of the kingdom of Babylon [1]. Regarding my Dell Inspiron 8600 laptop computer [2], I first saw the writing on the wall 13½ months ago – when it crashed [3]. At that time there was a lesson to be learnt. Did I learn it? Well, no. Even though the computer was then four years old, i.e. quite old. But I blithely assumed the November 2009 crash was a meaningless aberration. How stupid I was. Last Saturday it crashed again: it wouldn’t boot up. I tried everything I knew to diagnose and remedy this malfunction. To no avail. So I enlisted the help of my friend Craig. He suggested I try some things he (an IT man) knew and I didn’t. But they didn’t work either. So, in a funereal voice, he pronounced the Inspiron’s hard drive moribund. Luckily, after the November 2009 crash, as I blogged I would, I bought a portable hard drive. And since then I’ve used it religiously. I think I may have saved all my data. Though maybe not my contacts and emails. Craig suggested I download Ultimate Boot CD [4] – which may let me boot the dying machine one last time, so I can retrieve this info. The moral? If the writing’s on the wall, read it.
P.S. Yesterday I bought an HP Pavilion DV-3205 TX [5]. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 562

The Blue Screen of Death. How apt its name is. When you get one, it means something’s wrong with your computer. So terribly wrong that the operating system shuts it down. I got a BSoD last Sunday night – when I was in the next room on the phone with Sweetheart Vivienne. We spoke of something that prompted me to look up something on my computer. That’s when I discovered the BSoD. I rebooted, but a clicking, grinding noise came from the front left corner where the hard drive is, and I couldn’t boot past the initial BIOS screen. Suddenly my heart began to race, my mouth went dry, and I felt sick. I quickly ended our phone call. Then I ran the BIOS diagnosis program which told me it didn’t recognise a hard drive. For the next 30-45 minutes I tried and tried to boot, but the noise occurred each time, and no hard drive was recognised. What a disaster – because I hadn’t backed up some of my data for a month (though I back up some of it each day). I phoned my beloved again, and she gave me the names and numbers of some Melbourne firms who retrieve data from dead hard drives (for about A$1,000). Disconsolate and upset with myself, I went to bed. All night I tossed and turned and worried. Yesterday morning my beloved phoned to see how I and my computer were. I said I was so upset I couldn’t get out of bed to try the computer, but I was 100% sure the hard drive was dead. I asked her to send ‘happy week’ emails to our girls on my behalf. Then, half-heartedly, I pressed the computer’s Start button. And lo and behold – it booted normally! No noises. Just a perfect boot. I couldn’t believe it. I spent the next hour backing up what wasn’t but should have been backed up. And I phoned my beloved to tell her she’s a witch. What happened? Who knows? I don’t. Ah Sweet Mystery of Life. All I know is that it scared the bejesus out of me. And in the next few days I’m getting a portable hard drive which does automatic backups.