Trouble in Amsterdam

[iamback]

If you missed me, that's because I've been offline...

If I've been offline, that's because I was desperately trying to squeeze the last bit of space and speed out of poor old Grace - taking all precautions, as usual - and she refused to boot up after that. And of course my resident gremlins, who'd been playing with my ADSL modem/router and irregularly took me offline - all it took was reboot the modem, but it was still highly annoying - chose this moment to declare the modem their exclusive playground, and not let me in anymore.

So... I now have a "repair" installation of Windows on Grace - but all attempts to revive the original one have failed; I suspect an already slightly corrupt (?) registry got irreparably damaged by reorganizing the partitions. That means using the "repair" windows to move more stuff around, create a new "real" windows partition, and reinstall all of my software. Aaarrrgh! If only I could get at the Registry on the old Windows partition, but I don't know of any software that can access a regsitry on a non-active partition...

Meanwhile there was the big fair of the largest computer club in the world, the "HCC dagen"; in spite of troubles with Grace and internet connection I went anyway (twice!) and got a load of stuff to at least rebuild my LAN from a 100Mbit to a Gigabit LAN (and thus create faster access to my external media storage as well). And a new ADSL modem/router... installed now.

So, technically I'm back online now, but I'm typing this from Alan - on Grace all I've got is the "repair" windows, not a "real" installation with my software (including Moz). I'll still be mostly offline, while I rearrange the room to make place for the extra hardware I got and rebuild Grace.

(At least, when all that's done, I'll be getting a new computer - I've decided that will be George (as in Boole) - to take over from Grace, but Grace needs to be revived first.)

So, if you still miss me, that is because I'm still (mostly) offline... Sigh.

If anyone would like to adopt my resident gremlins, let me know. They're quite friendly - most of the time - and all they seem to need is some old hardware to play with. But their sense of humor clashes with mine.