Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache
Today's post is dedicated to "Kevin", IS Dude of the Year!
Kevin's our in-house IS support guy. It's not one particular deed that causes us to honor him today, the guy is just money in the bank every damn day and the world needs a couple billion more Kevins and any other cliche you can think of to describe someone who brings light to the dark alleys of civilization.
You remember the Jimmy Fallon SNL skit where he plays "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy"? Like most things SNL and Jimmy Fallon, it overstayed its welcome, but it was pretty funny when it first debuted and it was quite accurate in its portrayal of the typical IS guy: smug, sarcastic, and unhelpful. For crissakes I've lived through eras at work where calling IS meant calling cW or Joe Monkeyweb.
Actually, they were good men as well, they tried to fix the problem and when they couldn't, they knew to dial up those who could. But since they left, my IS experiences haven't been so rosy. There is an expectation on the part of IS that we as office workers know more than we do, or that we are asking for more than we should, or that we should just leave them alone so they can get back to their game of Doom. When they're not busy assuming that we're smarter than we are, they are lamenting how stupid we actually are.
But then our company hired Kevin (and another dude who's pretty good) and it's been service and respect and good cheer ever since. And what a difference that makes. For one thing, Kevin's a pretty normal guy on a social level. You can sit there and have a laugh with him or talk about the Mets and it's no big thing. For another, he'd rather solve the problem right off the bat by dedicating 19 seconds of his own time than tell you to "call the helpdesk and get an official work order/complaint number and we'll get back to you in a month."
Just solve the problem. What a concept.
The other day I was walking by his desk and I stopped and said hello and we talked for a few minutes and then for some reason I committed the cardinal sin of asking the IS guy for advice on a computer matter that was not work-related. I told him that my laptop had died and that I thought it was the hard drive but I wasn't sure and had he ever heard of some sleeve you can get where you take the old hard drive and put it into the sleeve and then you hook the sleeve up to a funcioning computer and then you can access the hard drive, sort of make it an external hard drive? And not three seconds have passed when he throws open his desk drawer and pulls out a little cardboard box and says, "You need one of these" and hands it to me. It's precisely the thing I'm talking about. "Take it home, get it back to me whenever," he says.
Kevin. Taking IS to a new place.
So I took the little thing home (it's actually just a cable with a USB attachment on one end and an IDE on the other) and I plugged my long-thought-dead hard drive into my wife's computer and goddamn if it didn't recognize it right away. It spun, it whirred, and I thought I was in the clear. It opened up like any other folder, and showed lots of other folders inside. It correctly noted that the dirve was 56GB total in size with 21 of that 56 available. So it was seeing the 35GB of stuff on there. And I was able to access a lot of it, even some of my MP3's.
However, I couldn't really get at the bulk of what I wanted to recover, namely my photos and word documents and the rest of my iTunes songs. I messed around with permissions and hidden files as best as my limited skills would allow me to, but those folders just weren't coming up. There were some folders I couldn't access but when I clicked their properties they were listed as empty anyway, so I don't think it was in them. Frustrating.
So here's my multi-part question, and isired mostly I am talking to you. Maybe BJL too because he likes taking apart computers.
1. Is there something I am missing? Is there a particular folder I should be looking in that possibly I overlooked?
2. If not, is there a better chance of the thing working if I put it into another (working) computer and hooked it up as that computer's actual boot drive? Meaning, if I opened up my wife's laptop and swapped my hard drive for hers, is it likely that I could launch windows, get the files I need, and burn them to CD before the thing died? And then could I just swap hers back in and boot it up again and nobody's the wiser? Or is hard drive swapping not so simple and straightforward? Is there a risk I would fuck up her computer by removing the hard drive and then putting it back? And if I have a virus or some shit on my files, is there any way I can infect her computer? I wouldn't think so b/c the two hard drives are never actually exchanging blood so to speak.
3) Is it likely that the reason I couldn't access the files I wanted is that they were on a damaged, inaccessible part of the disk? If so, should I give up?
4) Any other suggestions?
Thanks for your answers to this highly technical and boring post. I just really want to get some of those pics off there. The tunes are mostly replaceable and 90% are already burned as MP3's onto CD's.
I think you're probably really sick of me talking about computers and violently sick of me talking about the new Apple laptop. Should I get it? Should I wait? Will they make it better? Is it buggy? I'm even annoying myself. Part of the problem is that I am already caught up in this pathetic Apple culture of coveting every stupid product as if it holds the key to your happiness.
I'm caught up in it, but I hate it. I went to the Apple store today and it was typically overwhelming and the customers and geniuses alike were behaving so savagely that it made me think less of us as a species. That place is like the Fairway of electronics. They had like three or four MacBook Pros set up for people to tool around with, and of course people are bogarting their way onto the machines and then staying on there for like a half hour, reading emails, taking off their coats, updating their blogs, posing for pictures from the built in camera, looking at porn (actually, the SoHo Apple store has the parental controls on, so you can pretty much just cruise the Apple site and nothing else). I finally got on a machine for like two minutes. It felt hot, but not unbearably so. The display looked good, although definitely best viewed straight on and with a limited amount of movement in the hinge. Couldn't hear the buzzing noise that so many users have been complaining about, because the place was too loud and I'm sure they gave them non-screwy units to display anyway. Mostly it looked pretty good, like a PowerBook.
I was just futzing with it for a minute or two, launching apps and whatnot (which was really fast, I must say) and suddenly this nasty genius lady came up with a customer in tow and was all, "I'm sorry, can I use that?" So I cleared aside and she went into her spiel and the lady she was spieling was definitely interested and I'm listening in and finally the customer lady says, "OK, I'll take one." This next part was the part I knew was coming but it was still fascinating when it actually went down. The genius was like, "OK, let's get you rung up" and the customer goes, "OK, how does it work, do I then go pick it up over there?" motioning to the line of people picking up the items they had just purchased.
Of course, I knew that there was no way they actually had these in stock. From what I understand, each store has been getting severely limited quantities and I'm sure SoHo sold 'em out the first day. Bad product launch by Apple, I gotta say. A huge new item and nothing in stock? What a rush job. I'm sure they've lost a lot of business this way; they may lose mine.
The genius goes, "No, what we're actually gonna do is go ahead and fill out an order at our online store, and then you'll get the product in about 2 weeks. Which is actually better for you anyway..."
How it was "better" I'll never know because I turned away in disgust. Such dishonesty. On at least three levels.
1) At no time during the sales pitch did she indicate that there were no units in house.
2) It won't be 2 weeks, closer to 3 or 4 according to Apple's own site.
3) Coming to a crowded, insane, senses-assaulting environment like that Apple Store and sitting through a moronic sales pitch, only to be told that you can now order the item via their online store is in no way "better" than these other two options that the customer may have assumed were available to her:
a) going to a retail store, slapping down her 3 grand, and walking out with an actual product in hand, or
b) ordering via the online store from the comfort of her own home.
Apple, you're losing me.
After that the wife and I went out and had a wonderful Italian meal at the consistently great but still somehow overlooked Caffe Rosso on West 12th street. The West Village is will always be lovely, even if we all get blown up someday. Man I wish I had 10-15 to million to plunk down on a brownstone over there.
Then I went and played poker with the boys. I only lost $9 which is pretty good for me. It was fun, and I don't care if they only invite me along because I am a guaranteed mark. I did manage to win $2 in a bet with JP when I correctly stated that Kelly Lynch played the love interest in "Road House."
The graphic open of "Soul Train" features an animated train chugging across video of many of the famous performers who have graced the show's stage over the years -- Whitney, Stevie, etc. There are about a dozen artists featured in this open. For ten GP's, who is the only honky among them? No internet research please.
Kevin's our in-house IS support guy. It's not one particular deed that causes us to honor him today, the guy is just money in the bank every damn day and the world needs a couple billion more Kevins and any other cliche you can think of to describe someone who brings light to the dark alleys of civilization.
You remember the Jimmy Fallon SNL skit where he plays "Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy"? Like most things SNL and Jimmy Fallon, it overstayed its welcome, but it was pretty funny when it first debuted and it was quite accurate in its portrayal of the typical IS guy: smug, sarcastic, and unhelpful. For crissakes I've lived through eras at work where calling IS meant calling cW or Joe Monkeyweb.
Actually, they were good men as well, they tried to fix the problem and when they couldn't, they knew to dial up those who could. But since they left, my IS experiences haven't been so rosy. There is an expectation on the part of IS that we as office workers know more than we do, or that we are asking for more than we should, or that we should just leave them alone so they can get back to their game of Doom. When they're not busy assuming that we're smarter than we are, they are lamenting how stupid we actually are.
But then our company hired Kevin (and another dude who's pretty good) and it's been service and respect and good cheer ever since. And what a difference that makes. For one thing, Kevin's a pretty normal guy on a social level. You can sit there and have a laugh with him or talk about the Mets and it's no big thing. For another, he'd rather solve the problem right off the bat by dedicating 19 seconds of his own time than tell you to "call the helpdesk and get an official work order/complaint number and we'll get back to you in a month."
Just solve the problem. What a concept.
The other day I was walking by his desk and I stopped and said hello and we talked for a few minutes and then for some reason I committed the cardinal sin of asking the IS guy for advice on a computer matter that was not work-related. I told him that my laptop had died and that I thought it was the hard drive but I wasn't sure and had he ever heard of some sleeve you can get where you take the old hard drive and put it into the sleeve and then you hook the sleeve up to a funcioning computer and then you can access the hard drive, sort of make it an external hard drive? And not three seconds have passed when he throws open his desk drawer and pulls out a little cardboard box and says, "You need one of these" and hands it to me. It's precisely the thing I'm talking about. "Take it home, get it back to me whenever," he says.
Kevin. Taking IS to a new place.
So I took the little thing home (it's actually just a cable with a USB attachment on one end and an IDE on the other) and I plugged my long-thought-dead hard drive into my wife's computer and goddamn if it didn't recognize it right away. It spun, it whirred, and I thought I was in the clear. It opened up like any other folder, and showed lots of other folders inside. It correctly noted that the dirve was 56GB total in size with 21 of that 56 available. So it was seeing the 35GB of stuff on there. And I was able to access a lot of it, even some of my MP3's.
However, I couldn't really get at the bulk of what I wanted to recover, namely my photos and word documents and the rest of my iTunes songs. I messed around with permissions and hidden files as best as my limited skills would allow me to, but those folders just weren't coming up. There were some folders I couldn't access but when I clicked their properties they were listed as empty anyway, so I don't think it was in them. Frustrating.
So here's my multi-part question, and isired mostly I am talking to you. Maybe BJL too because he likes taking apart computers.
1. Is there something I am missing? Is there a particular folder I should be looking in that possibly I overlooked?
2. If not, is there a better chance of the thing working if I put it into another (working) computer and hooked it up as that computer's actual boot drive? Meaning, if I opened up my wife's laptop and swapped my hard drive for hers, is it likely that I could launch windows, get the files I need, and burn them to CD before the thing died? And then could I just swap hers back in and boot it up again and nobody's the wiser? Or is hard drive swapping not so simple and straightforward? Is there a risk I would fuck up her computer by removing the hard drive and then putting it back? And if I have a virus or some shit on my files, is there any way I can infect her computer? I wouldn't think so b/c the two hard drives are never actually exchanging blood so to speak.
3) Is it likely that the reason I couldn't access the files I wanted is that they were on a damaged, inaccessible part of the disk? If so, should I give up?
4) Any other suggestions?
Thanks for your answers to this highly technical and boring post. I just really want to get some of those pics off there. The tunes are mostly replaceable and 90% are already burned as MP3's onto CD's.
I think you're probably really sick of me talking about computers and violently sick of me talking about the new Apple laptop. Should I get it? Should I wait? Will they make it better? Is it buggy? I'm even annoying myself. Part of the problem is that I am already caught up in this pathetic Apple culture of coveting every stupid product as if it holds the key to your happiness.
I'm caught up in it, but I hate it. I went to the Apple store today and it was typically overwhelming and the customers and geniuses alike were behaving so savagely that it made me think less of us as a species. That place is like the Fairway of electronics. They had like three or four MacBook Pros set up for people to tool around with, and of course people are bogarting their way onto the machines and then staying on there for like a half hour, reading emails, taking off their coats, updating their blogs, posing for pictures from the built in camera, looking at porn (actually, the SoHo Apple store has the parental controls on, so you can pretty much just cruise the Apple site and nothing else). I finally got on a machine for like two minutes. It felt hot, but not unbearably so. The display looked good, although definitely best viewed straight on and with a limited amount of movement in the hinge. Couldn't hear the buzzing noise that so many users have been complaining about, because the place was too loud and I'm sure they gave them non-screwy units to display anyway. Mostly it looked pretty good, like a PowerBook.
I was just futzing with it for a minute or two, launching apps and whatnot (which was really fast, I must say) and suddenly this nasty genius lady came up with a customer in tow and was all, "I'm sorry, can I use that?" So I cleared aside and she went into her spiel and the lady she was spieling was definitely interested and I'm listening in and finally the customer lady says, "OK, I'll take one." This next part was the part I knew was coming but it was still fascinating when it actually went down. The genius was like, "OK, let's get you rung up" and the customer goes, "OK, how does it work, do I then go pick it up over there?" motioning to the line of people picking up the items they had just purchased.
Of course, I knew that there was no way they actually had these in stock. From what I understand, each store has been getting severely limited quantities and I'm sure SoHo sold 'em out the first day. Bad product launch by Apple, I gotta say. A huge new item and nothing in stock? What a rush job. I'm sure they've lost a lot of business this way; they may lose mine.
The genius goes, "No, what we're actually gonna do is go ahead and fill out an order at our online store, and then you'll get the product in about 2 weeks. Which is actually better for you anyway..."
How it was "better" I'll never know because I turned away in disgust. Such dishonesty. On at least three levels.
1) At no time during the sales pitch did she indicate that there were no units in house.
2) It won't be 2 weeks, closer to 3 or 4 according to Apple's own site.
3) Coming to a crowded, insane, senses-assaulting environment like that Apple Store and sitting through a moronic sales pitch, only to be told that you can now order the item via their online store is in no way "better" than these other two options that the customer may have assumed were available to her:
a) going to a retail store, slapping down her 3 grand, and walking out with an actual product in hand, or
b) ordering via the online store from the comfort of her own home.
Apple, you're losing me.
After that the wife and I went out and had a wonderful Italian meal at the consistently great but still somehow overlooked Caffe Rosso on West 12th street. The West Village is will always be lovely, even if we all get blown up someday. Man I wish I had 10-15 to million to plunk down on a brownstone over there.
Then I went and played poker with the boys. I only lost $9 which is pretty good for me. It was fun, and I don't care if they only invite me along because I am a guaranteed mark. I did manage to win $2 in a bet with JP when I correctly stated that Kelly Lynch played the love interest in "Road House."
The graphic open of "Soul Train" features an animated train chugging across video of many of the famous performers who have graced the show's stage over the years -- Whitney, Stevie, etc. There are about a dozen artists featured in this open. For ten GP's, who is the only honky among them? No internet research please.
posted by hans q. bungle at 14:15
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