The Garden of the Blind

Ever had a day when nothing seemed to go right? Monday was such a day for me.

After talking to Jake on Saturday (Happy Birthday!) about problems I’ve been having with a computer, I set out with a range of vague goals for the day. My ultimate goal was to test the computer’s wireless adapter in an environment independent of the currently installed version of WinXP, which I do not fully trust. To do this, I wanted to try out BartPE, which is a sort of stand-alone bootable Windows, and for that I wanted to create a bootable XP disc with SP2 slipstreamed (my XP disc already had SP1 included). On top of this, I wanted to free up some space wherever I could, and generally clean things up a bit.

It didn’t take long to slipstream SP2 into a copy of the Windows install files, but creating a bootable disc of that was a problem. The copy of Nero I have fails every time I try to create a bootable disc from an image. An attempt to create a boot disc using Bart’s Boot CD creator failed because the installer wouldn’t run under DOS. I eventually just created a BartPE disc using the SP2 files from the hard drive, but when I booted with it, the wireless card wouldn’t work, and I couldn’t get an appropriate patch to work with the BartPE creator.

I did eventually get the wireless to work in Knoppix, which I have done before with some success. It dropped out after a few minutes, so I did successfully eliminate the software as the cause of my recent wireless difficulties. (My apologies to Days Inn for denouncing their wireless network, which is probably almost adequate instead of useless.) After talking to Jake again, I was led to a program that would have streamlined everything I had worked on all day slipstreaming into one easy step, and I had a fully functional install CD with SP2. I was in the middle of what would be 3 unsuccessful defrag operations (on three different machines) when I was pulled away to clean the apartment.

For the evening, I went to a baseball game where, thanks to a sold out crowd, some innocent miscommunication, and inadequately staffed concessions stands, I waited in three lines through two innings or more for a hot dog that wasn’t what I was trying to get. Fortunately, I only missed one hit (from the visiting team) of what turned out to be a decent game. Then, we spent an extra half hour trying to get home due to a failed attempt to get ahead of the game on the light rail system.

Note to UTA: You suck! We ended up spending $3.40 for a pass that should have cost $2.75 and was a severely restricted form of two separate passes worth $2.80, and all because your machine wouldn’t give change. Your information signs spend way too much time telling us the current date and time, and not enough telling us when the next train is coming. Neither of these problems would be hard to fix. The infrastructure is already there, and you already have access to the right information. In the mean time, I’m driving everywhere I go.