Sadly, after all the effort, I still don’t know what was wrong. The computer stopped booting without an error, so I tried to fix it with a variety of different tools.  Some of them may have introduced other errors, or exacerbated the original error, and somehow it all ended up booting again around 6pm today.

Things which I tried which did not help: fixmbr, fixboot, copy partitions to a spare SATA drive I have lying around (waiting for that new build I’ve been planning for nearly a year now), copying NTLDR, hiding and unhiding partitions, making partitions active and boot, and pulling out hair.

Things which I think led to the fix: editing the boot.ini file via a Linux boot disk to point to partition(2) instead of partition(1), ensuring the recovery partition does not get assigned a drive letter in XP. And possibly the cider.

And this is why I have several USB drives about, as well as why I experiment with live distros on USB keys so I’m not completely flummoxed when everything goes pear shaped.  I still don’t trust this machine, though.  Flaky like croissant dough.

Now booting off a live Linux USB stick, running diagnostics on the machine. There appears to be nothing wrong with it. SMART shows no errors.  NTFSChk shows no errors. I can mount and browse the drive perfectly well in Linux. Now I’m running a freshly-updated CLAMAV scan against the 200+ gigs on the main drive, but I begin to think this won’t reveal anything either.

Naturally, I can’t afford a new computer currently. Heck, I’ve got parts for a new build in my dining room that have 6 months of dust on them already.  *sigh*

Seed was pretty decent, actually. They had a lot of good writers working for them, and they seemed to understand the online world fairly well. They created a site which they used as something of cross-pollination project between print and blogging, the much-visited ScienceBlogs. A while back, they lost a few of their high-profile bloggers to Discover Magazine’s active blog portal. It appears that they shuttered the magazine last fall, with the promise that they weren’t going to quit publishing a magazine, they were just reducing the frequency and won’t you just wait until spring 2010 and you’ll get a new issue.  Um…yeah. Still waiting, and there doesn’t seem to be any official word (or at least not findable on their site) about where Seed Magazine went.

Last month, the ScienceBlogs folks noticed a new blog in their midst, one written by PepsiCo. There was much weeping and gnashing of teeth, ending with Pepsi’s blog being dropped. This week, there is a bit more of a kerfuffle. It’s a bit vague around the edges, but it seems the need to make money has become more important to Seed Media than any respect they may have had for being a science media focal point. I’m not clear on why this all came to a head today, rather than during the Pepsi Challenge, but a new batch of bloggers have jumped from ScienceBlogs and it’s not looking good for the site as a whole.  Interestingly, the biggest SciBlogger, the one who accounts for over half of their total traffic, has decided to go on strike/haitus rather than quit, but maybe Seed Media can bring ScienceBlogs back from this brink that their own inept management has brought them to. At a minimum, they need to realize that without content, their advertising department is completely worthless.

Meanwhile, where can I get a refund for the remaining issues on my subscription?  Hello?  *knock knock*

BIG BANG BIG BOOM – the new wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Is this the beginning of the price war that finally makes dedicated ebook readers affordable?  I know, the manufacturers currently think “under $200″ is affordable, but let’s be honest – it’s a niche. When I can buy a paperback book for 8 bucks, or buy the same book as an ebook for 8 bucks, which one am I going to get? For most of us, the answer is obvious. It would be nice to carry around dozens or hundreds of books in a convenient reader for those times when I find myself looking at the dated magazines of a waiting room, but I’m not dropping $200 for what is essentially the interface to a lending library. Those books on the Kindle and nook aren’t really mine. I can’t sell them, give them away, loan them to people (with very limited caveats dealing with an ecosystem of other ereaders which doesn’t exist), etc. Not to mention, if I’m at the beach with a paperback and something catastrophic happens, I’m out 8 bucks, not 200.

What price do ebook readers need to reach before you’d buy one?

I’d been holding to a tradition of taking a “big” vacation in even years, and just short trips in Texas in odd years.  Then there was the unfortunate contract recompete that led to my job being gone for six weeks, and coming back at a 15% lower salary, so we doubled up on the Texas years. This year, we finally had the cash to stumble out to the west coast again, so we did.

For several years, The Boy has wanted to take a surfing class. Kat had an abiding distrust of Disneyana, and a love of animals. I love Monterey. All these combined to produce our itinerary of San Diego, Anaheim, and Monterey.

My aunt in Tucson is very generous and interesting, so we crashed there on the way to and fro. My grandfather lives in San Diego, so we had dinner with him. I graduated high school from the Los Angeles area, so we had dinner and drinks with some of my high school friends (one I’d not seen since graduation even).

The surfing class went well for Alex. Kat and I fell down a lot and got very tired. The class included an hour of equipment rental after the session; we did not need it.  I’ve almost recovered a couple weeks later.

The next day we hit San Diego Wild Animal Park; the highlight of that trip was a deer in the petting kraal licking Kat’s forehead. It’s always nice to realize you could be a salt lick for other animals.

Our day at Disneyland served to rid Kat of her distaste for the concept, rooted in some bad time at Disneyworld 30 years ago. Because we went to the park days before any southern California kids got out of school, we had much-reduced crowds. So much so, that we got on over a dozen rides during the day. Star Tours is getting revamped this fall, and Captain Eo is back for an unknown-length engagement, so we were happy to see both of those attractions. The only major ride we didn’t hit was Indiana Jones – it was in a 3-day refurb cycle, darnit.

Monterey is awesome. If you’ve never been, you just don’t understand. We hit several beaches, finding almost no shells, much to the dismay of The Boy. We ameliorated this dismay with lavish applications of sea lions. Al, an Army buddy (makes me feel like I should be in an Ernest Borgnine movie saying that) works at Monterey Aquarium, so we got the behind-the-scenes tour of that marvelous place. Seafood every day made The Woman very happy. Playing in the incredibly cold water of the Monterey Bay made The Boy very happy. Being back in Monterey, even for just a few days, made me very happy. I love that place.

While we in the area, we stopped by the Winchester Mystery House, which is a beautiful place with great decorations and fine appointments, as well as doors to nowhere and windows in the floor. Then, we spent a few wonderful hours with another high school friend, who has become a shark lawyer in San Francisco. Emily rocks and Alex got a great photo with Yoda out of the experience. For those veterans who spent time at the Defense Language Institute in SF, you’d be amazed at what they’ve done with the old hospital. Well, they knocked it down about 8 years ago. But, where it once stood is now a giant LucasArts facility which looks remarkably like a 1940s-era military building, but without the crumbling facades and low ceilings and with some added Darth Vader and Boba Fett statues in the lobby.

We hit up an In-N-Out in Yuma on the way to California, and in the middle of the desert on the way back. They really need to bring those to Texas.  Kat got plenty of animal time on this trip, and now is convinced that we must find a way to move to the West Coast as soon as we can.  That’s at least a year away, but I’m up for any idea that involves being near the ocean.  I hope you enjoyed our little photo journey through California – more pictures on the blog gallery, as usual.