Now, it's clean ...

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This is the only way I know to make 100% sure that the virus that attacked the laptop this drive was in will never infect another machine (at least, not from that machine).

The first blow was with the claw end of the hammer -- the platter instantly shattered (pulverized actually). When we picked it up, this fine dust came out. It was rather gratifying!

Soon to be a non-infected hard drive...

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What happens when my team isolates a virus-infected computer?

Behold -- the before picture.

Tomorrow -- the after.

Brain Age ...

I got Caryn a Nintendo DS-Lite with Brain Age for Christmas. Brain Age was designed by a Japanese Neurologist. It includes a series of activities and games designed to increase brain activity, resulting in a "more fit" or "younger" brain, followed by a test that determines your brain's relative age. You can see information about the game at the game's web site.

I started out with a brain age in my 60's. After weeks of daily training, I've got it down to the age you see in the picture (that's 12 years younger than my physical age!).

Tiv-Uh-Oh...

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Our friends a Tivo are masters of managing expectations. Clearly, the guy who wrote this error message is a big fan of Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott of the Starship Enterprise (tell them it will take much longer than it really will, so when you finish sooner, you come off as a hero!).

The actual fix took less than 20 minutes. This 20 minutes would have seemed like an ETERNITY if I wasn't expecting it to take 3 hours.

Well played Tivo engineers -- well played.

Try, just try to guess what I do for a living...

Data infrastructure makes for a series of moments of controlled chaos. Bits go here, bits go there -- blue wires, black wires, yellow wires, orange fiber-optic cables.

Yet, in spite of all the confusion and spaghetti, it turns out that everthing goes where it is supposed to go -- all of the data that should be read is; all of the data that shouldn't be read isn't.

Sasha got me started...

My lovely, sweet daughter-in-law (yes, I'm going to call her that, ring or no ring) started one of these today. It looks interesting, so I'm going to try one myself.

Now, you'll have to understand -- I'm not often good at sticking to things, but I'm going to try -- try to post a pic a day.

Here is pic #1



We live in California -- land of wine and computers. This computer is one I just got back today after I broke it being an idiot.

Well, day 1 complete!