Ketchup

It's time to catch-up on what's been going on -

New laptop arrived (see here), works great, just could accept the old laptops hard disk (new laptop is setup for SATA, old one was ATA, converters don't fit into laptop bay, and not sure what they'd do for a hard disk locked one anyway).

So - sent the hard disk off to PWCrack.com to get them to unlock it, so I could recover the data. They were able to - sent it back, slipped it into the USB case, plugged it into the desktop - nada. Didn't panic, unplugged it, and plugged it into the new laptop - voila. Recovered Nava and my documents folders, then the Outlook files, which are always nicely hidden, and then the Quicken files, which Quicken likes to store it it's program directory.

Dell wants the old dead laptop back (some might call it evidence) with the hard drive, so I've deleted all of the personal stuff, and am now "shredding" it (running a program to remove all traces of deleted files, and on top of that, write different patterns of data, so even then, it's damned tough to find anything).

On the monitor saga, finally dragged my laptop docking-station home from work, which has DVI output. Plugged it in, couldn't get 1600x1200 (while I can get ~2048x1600 at work, so it's not the laptop/docking-station). Called Samsung back, to which they couldn't argue, and are, hopefully, sending out replacement #3. Last time this happened, talked on a Monday, it was shipped on Tuesday and arrived on Thursday. This time, no sign of it even shipping yet.

In the meantime, one of the armchairs in the living room decided to break both springs that help it stay "closed" when the leg rest is down. No worries - we'll just swing by the store (The Leather Factory) on Saturday. Oops - where did they go? Out of business. Somewhat annoying for us, but at least we didn't have something on order, and bye-bye deposit. Tried to find the name of who made the mechanical system for it, found some patent numbers, but that hasn't helped yet. Did a temporary fix tonight, by swaging on a loop (the spring itself didn't break, just the hook on it's end that connects the extendable leg rest part to the frame) of wire instead. Took 3 prototype attempts to figure out how to swage the loop and then swage the loop onto the spring. Might even last long enough to forget about finding some new springs - or at least give me more time to see if I can salvage some off of a Goodwill chair or so!

And then yesterday, driving home, my left headlight just dies. Worked when I pulled out (could see 2 dots reflecting), didn't when I got home. Went to Pep Boys to get a replacement - got a pair (decided to replace them both). Of course, the dead one is crammed in between the battery and the frame, so you have to crane your neck around even to see the plug, and once you get your hand in there, it's all by feel. But - only took an extra couple of minutes, so it wasn't so bad.

So that's the what's up blog, to catch-up. Which sounds like Ketchup. Which is pretty much what this post is - squashed tomatoes and some sugar. Good with fries. Better than mayo, unless it's a nice garlic aioli.