Machine failure
It is one of those days when good news just had to be followed by bad news…
I got up early this morning since I had a lot of work to do. I'm working on three custom design projects at the same time and a fourth project was going to be launched this afternoon, so I had a long day ahead of me. But at the first look at the computer screen, I noticed that something was very wrong. The screen was flickering and there were random characters jumping around the screen. And the floppy drive was making noises, as if it was trying to find files stored on a removed disk. At first, I guessed that it was some kind of virus. But when I tried to reboot the machine, it crashed completely.
So it is a hardware failure, most likely a motherboard breakdown. I will order a new board soon, but until I get it I will work with my laptop - where I don't have any old e-mails or project files. I will try to recover the files from my main harddrive using a USB cabinet tomorrow. But the harddrive is getting old as well, I've had it for a couple of years now so I could really need a hardware upgrade…
Edit: Thanks to a couple of generous donations, I will be able to order a new motherboard for my computer sooner than I expected! Thanks everyone, you are amazing…
Comments
Comment from Andreas
Time: May 23, 2006, 6:28 pm
I didn't lose any e-mail. I just don't have any mail stored on my laptop. Hosted Gmail sounds like a nice idea, but I can't see what it would add compared to my current e-mail setup. I have enough space on my server, a great webmail system with calendar included (which I don't use anyway) and the ability to download e-mails and write answers in offline mode from any computer I want to through a portable Thunderbird installation on a USB memory stick (very much needed). I can't get it much better than that - unless I hire someone to write for me as well, haha… ;) But thanks for the tip, it may be very useful for some of my friends so I'll pass on the recommendation!
Comment from Ainslie
Time: May 23, 2006, 10:55 pm
On there way!
Sorry I didn't see this earlier. I hope you get back up and running soon.
Comment from isecore
Time: May 23, 2006, 11:29 pm
I'd never trust anyone else with my email. Sure, you can "lose" it if you're using a desktop mail-app, but I'd rather take that risk than letting Google or some other third-party corporation keep track of my mail for me.
Keeping backups is pretty essential when doing important things on computers, and anyone who's too lazy or whatever to keep backups is a dummy. Trusting my mail to a third-party corporation who could just as easily lose it without me having anything to say about it? No thanks.
Doing it the way Andreas does it with Thunderbird on a USB-stick is probably one of the more fool-proof methods. I don't do it quite the same, but I do take regular backups of my mail.
Comment from seanrox
Time: May 24, 2006, 12:05 am
isecore: I understand your concerns with privacy and email. I feel the same way but saying you don't trust any third party to handle your email ultra technically isn't right because anyone who is connected to the internet is using a third party provider for their connection or outgoing mail server. When you send or receive email unless you are using some sort of PGP key, many third party people could be holding copies of all your sent or received emails, at least every machine your email bounces through until it reaches the person it was sent which could be hundreds of machines. Thoughts?
Comment from isecore
Time: May 24, 2006, 12:58 am
Yes, of course, but I wasn't primarily thinking of this from a security-perspective. Email is inherently insecure, and I accept that since there's no realistic alternative except from things along the line of PGP-encrypting (which is doable but far from straight-forward). I was speaking from a mostly archival standpoint.
None the less, I don't really trust corporations since even though email is insecure there's really no telling what they might use/abuse your email to get things. Sure, Google is probably a bit less evil than some corporations *cough*microsoft*cough* but none the less I prefer to keep my email stored somewhere where I know it's not being abused.
Comment from Benny
Time: May 24, 2006, 4:56 am
W00t?!
How a hardware failure turns into a "what_kind_of_email_should_i_use". Don't we all just love internet?! Wonder what will happend if i say "My_wife_is_barking_on_me"? Maybe i will get a new bike from someone?
Real men don't backup things - Nerds do - and i always backup things.
To be totaly honest - i have NOT read all the posts to this topic so i might be totlay screwed up regarding the subject/topic.
For "them peaople don't follow" i sen a ;) and even a :) for my post. Andreas, keep up the g00d work!
//Benny
Comment from Neil
Time: May 24, 2006, 7:00 pm
The real solution: write letters and send them in stamped envelopes.
Comment from Carl Galloway
Time: May 24, 2006, 8:09 pm
Neil, that's way too sophisitcated for my liking, get a slave and make them run. Personal delivery is better anyway, they can bring a return message and you never need to worry about losing data, oh hang on, I spot a flaw in my thinking, what if the slave has a bad memory, hmmm, we could always tattoo them, ah but what about privacy…
Comment from Andreas
Time: May 24, 2006, 8:25 pm
Or just let everything in your life be completely available to everyone. That would cause many new problems, but also solve some of the current ones. I would probably get a whole lot of weightloss spam. But I wouldn't see any more ads for penis enlargement pills!
I vote for that, definitely. Oh, wait a second, did I just write that?
Comment from Carl Galloway
Time: May 25, 2006, 5:03 am
Considering this page will probably stored in archives for the next million years maybe you should clarify that you don't need the penis enlargement pills.
Comment from Andreas
Time: May 25, 2006, 5:10 am
I wonder if that phrase will affect my search engine placements? I better not mention it again, because I have a feeling that search engines won't be able to see the humor in it, haha… =)
Comment from Patrick
Time: May 23, 2006, 6:08 pm
If you're still using Outlook or some other desktop software…stop! Like you said, you lost all of your old emails. Get Gmail! Or even better get Gmail for your domain!
https://www.google.com/hosted/
You can apply for unlimited email addressed through your domain name, and have the luxury of using Gmails servers and 2 gigs of storage.
Now that you're on good terms with Google again you should try it.