RMS Script to change to different store databases from the same machine.

The performances were, meh.  The Black Eyed Peas sound terrible live. They really need to learn this. The rest of the performances were just OK. My favorite part of the night was Wanda Sykes explaining how Simon plays with his nipples when he is bored. I guess she is a fan of TMZ.

Tim Urban went home, but they didn’t give him a chance to sing at the end. Thank you for going long Ryan Seacrest!

Lee DeWyze
The Boxer – Simon and Garfunkle
Awesome. I loved his performance. I felt it, I was caught up in it and I think he has areal shot. Simon was right on when he told Lee he had his moment. Since that night he has been incredible.

Tim Urban
THe Goo Goo Dolls – Better Days
I have never been a fan. I do not care for his voice and feel like he has made it this far on looks and teenie bopper votes, but like Zac efron, he will fade away.

Aaron Kelly
R. Kelly – I believe I can fly
I just don’t feel it. I kept waiting for bugs bunny to pop up around his feet with a basketball. This performance would have gotten him laid at his high school dance, but is not Main Stream Radio quality. I would have turned it off in 10 seconds too.

Siobhan Magnus
Whitney Houston – When You Believe
Another Disney song? Where are the animated frogs? She is no Mariah or Whitney. She is descent singer, But please don’t let her talk any more.

Michael Lynch
Nickleback – Hero
It was good. I liked it better than most of the performances up to now. I am not usually a fan of his, but this was a good performance, for him.

Crystal Bowersox
The Impressions – People Get Ready
I teared up. I have loved her since the auditions. She is my favorite to win and I look forward to her success.

I created this video in 1999 with a Sony VCR and a Sony CCD-FX700 video camera. I am converting the Hi8 to Digital and this is the first one. I have to record the sound using my original video camera as it will not play the video. I bought a different camera off Ebay that will play the video, but cannot play the sound. So I record the video and then rewind the tape, put it in the other camera and then record the sound.

I had a hard drive get reformatted. I say “got” reformatted because I am still not real sure what happened. It was February 28th 2010 I was sitting in my living room watching Jimmy Johnson chase Jeff Gordon in the Shelby American at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. It was also the last day of the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. I was curious how the U.S. Men’s Hockey team was doing and grabbed my laptop to check. I launched Google Chrome, I was evaluating it for a possible switch and I got page cannot be displayed message. The wireless was not seeing any networks. No big deal, I have had this happen a couple of times in the past when coming out of hibernation.

As the machine was shutting down I got up, went to the bathroom and headed into the kitchen for a drink. When I came back into the room and looked at the screen I felt woozy and threw up a little in the back of my throat. HP recovery was copying files. I knew the first thing it does is format the drive. Sure enough it had reformatted my drive. On top of that I was getting errors about corrupt files on the recovery.

I stopped the recovery and pulled the drive. There was nothing I could do right then, I didn’t have any way to hook the drive to another computer. The next day I bought a USB adapter to connect the drive up my wife’s desktop. Her machine was locking up every couple of minutes. It would not stay running long enough to download any recovery utilities let alone install them. I went and bought her a new machine.

900 dollars and a brutal fight with unsigned drivers on Windows 7 64bit later, about 11 O’Clock at night, I was finally able to look on the drive. I was not able to save anything. I tried 10 different recovery software. I got some bits and pieces, but it honestly looked like something had randomly over written 20% of all the files I wanted. I had never seen anything like it.

After passing through all five stages of grief in what was truly one of the worst nights of my life, I accepted the loss and started the process of rebuilding the machine. I know some people will shake their heads at what I am about to tell you next, but I put the same drive back in my machine. It passed all the disk check tests both manufacturer and BIOS, so it was not the drive that was the issue. I am an optimist and live by the axiom that nothing on a computer can really be explained until it happens more than once.

The recovery still failed when launched from the recovery partition. No problem, I made recovery CD’s when I got the machine. I even knew where they were! I use a straightened paper clip to open the CD door, yea it’s broken too, and popped in disc one. Error reading drive. Interesting. I used the straightened paper clip again and put the CD in my wife’s old machine that I had set up next to me. Oh yea, it was the USB wireless that caused the locking up. I Put it on Ethernet and no more lock ups. I put the CD in and got continual CRC errors. At this point I just laughed and went to bed.

The Next day I tried a Windows XP SP1 CD I had. Windows ccouldn’t see the Hard drive to install on. I needed the SATA driver. yea. I went to HP’s website and downloaded the driver. It would only install to a floppy. I haven’t had a floppy in years. I scrounged a recovery CD for an earlier model of the laptop. No SATA driver. I went into the BIOS and disabled SATA for the drive and was able to install windows. It ran like a 486. It took 3 hours to install SQL Server 2005. That just wouldn’t work.

I still had a copy of the i386 folder in the recovery partition. I figured I should be able to make an install CD from it. I copy this to my other machine and built an install CD from it. That was pretty cool actually. No luck though, no driver. So, I hit google again. My idea wass to extract the driver and slipstream it into the install CD I created from the i386 folder. It took two specialized pieces of software to extract the driver and then I was able to slip stream it and SP2 into an install CD.

Success! I am typing away on the laptop right now. I happen to be on an Amtrak train going from New York to Washington DC. Office is installed, but my plan is to move to google docs. With the addition of offline mode, I think I may be able to do it. Offline mode will allow me to work on docs and then they will synchronize when I have a connection. So for so good.

I am still looking for a free backup solution for everything else. I like the Google docs offline mode model. I don’t want to have to do anything for the backup to happen. I know carbonite and other pay services work this way, but I am cheap. I want to figure out a  way to do it for free.

222 North Ingram Mill Road Springfield, MO 65802

Toll free: 877-284-1251 Phone: 417-863-1440

Fax: 417-863-2215

Dates Stayed:

Speedtest:

Amenities:

• Pool 
• Weight Room
• Continental Breakfast
• Iron & Ironing Board
• Wireless Internet (OK)

Synopsis:

This used to be a Hampton Inn. In fact it was a Hampton Inn when the reservations were made a couple of weeks ago. It changed names some time last week.

My first room was full of Gnats. When I changed rooms they told me the first floor used to flood when it rained. I guess that could be partly why Hampton Inns sold the property.

Download: Reveal

900 Packer Ave Philadelphia, PA 19148 | Phone: 215.755.9500 | Fax: 215.462.6947

Dates Stayed:

Speedtest:

Couldn’t finish one. Used my air card most of the time.

Amenities:

• Pool (Outside could be drained)
• Weight Room
• On Site Store (Closed in evenings)
• Restaurant
• Iron & Ironing Board
• Wireless Internet (terrible)

Synopsis:

The restaurant was newer and I got a Cheese Steak the first night. It was pretty good. I got the food and went back to my room. The hotel is old and in dire need of upgrading. The furniture was newer, but the TV was terribly old. The overall feel was old and skeezy.

Breakfast was terrible! I got spoiled milk the 2nd day and didn’t eat breakfast the 3rd day.

Speedtest:

Amenities:
Hair Dryer
Iron & Ironing Board
Indoor Swimming Pool

Free Breakfast

Dates Stayed:
04/26/09-04/29/09

Synopsis:

This hotel was OK. The rooms were clean, but the breakfast nastiness was enough to make it actuall bad.