Stupid Computer Week.

[P. J. Alling]

Well, I've just been forced to upgrade just about everything. 

First my Win2K server bites the big one.   Mother board and Processor 
fried. 
No big loss I got both for free, and they were getting long in the 
tooth, I  can re-use just about everything else in the case.  I then 
discover that no new mother boards will use my the ancient video card so 
add that to the mix, (well at least I could re-use the case and drives). 

Next I discover the reason that the MB fried, the power supply smokes, 
yep just dies with a puff of acrid smoke, luckily it doesn't take 
anything else with it... this time.  So it's off for a new power 
supply.  Now everything seems to be copasetic.  Of course Win2K boots to 
a blue screen, wrong drivers and all, but that's cool just re-install 
the OS.  Damn, I forgot it would forget about all the software, (and 
updates, did I mention about updates...), so after getting hooked into 
the network fiddling with settings until everything can see each other 
and spending literally days downloading updates, it's time to reinstall 
software. I figure I'll do the stuff I have local first so I attach to 
the 85GB drive on my photo machine and start installing over the 
network.  After the first couple of programs it STOPS!  The network 
connection is frozen. 

The photo machine is blue-screened.  The 4 year old 85GB decided to die 
right now!!!  (It too appears to have smoked, same acrid smell of burned 
insulation, but everything else seems to be fine).  It had the most 
unused space so I had a fair amount stored there.  I've lost my PDML 
archive, most of the software and utilities I've downloaded and didn't 
bother to back up, and about 30 megs of images from the *ist-D that I 
hadn't backed up yet.  (Not to mention a number of software projects 
that hadn't been worked on in a while that I hadn't bothered to save).  
Oh yes, my address book and calendar are gone as well web bookmarks, 
sheesh, you'd think I'd never had a hard drive fail before, but you get 
sloppy.   Most things can be re-created but it will be just such a pain 
for weeks, maybe even months....

<Pentax Content>
On a positive side I've been able to install all the latest Pentax 
*ist-D software and I've decided that Pentax Remote assistant is 
actually pritty cool and maybe even usefull.
</Pentax Content>