Sunday, September 21, 2008 - Windows Vista Sucks III: Endgame!

I will say, for as much as Vista bugs the hell out of me (see Windows Vista Sucks I and II for some thoughts on the matter), I probably wouldn't have done anything about it and just lived with the pain. The wife however, wasn't as forgiving/lazy and convinced me that something *had* to be done. So I got a copy of XP and am starting the downgrade process.

The process of backing up my files has highlighted many of the pain points, flakiness, inconsistencies and bugs that still exist in Vista.

• When moving a chunk of files, Vista will sometimes leave behind a bunch of empty folders on the source drive.


• The computer powered down suddenly (damn battery lasts like 45 seconds) and when I restarted it, it wanted to do chkdsk on the external drive. Fine, fair 'nuff. Well I got distracted and wandered off and ended up rebooting the computer again the next day. It asked to do chkdsk again. This time after it finished and I tried to access the drive it said (*gasp*) "Drive cannot be read without being formatted, do you want to format now?" OMG, I have already moved 30 GB of files over! NONONONONO!!! Thankfully, I detached the drive and reattached it and it worked fine.


• Next I moved all the files from the "Pictures" folder to the external drive. It didn't move the files but rather just copied them. When I tried deleting the files from the source, it deleted them from both places!


• I tried moving certain "special" folders (AppData, Local Data) and nothing happened. After trying several times I tried copying them and it worked. I am fine if it is not going to allow me to delete files it thinks it needs, but at least give me a damn error message telling me as much. The silent treatment is not cool.


• I generally move a couple of folders at a time. One ~2GB folder took a couple of minutes, the next ~2GB folder however said it would take 20 minutes! This folder was all music (iTunes, legal and everything) so clearly some extra checks are being done on it.
  
  Well after 5 minutes, I vaguely recalled something I read online and I dropped the network connection. Funny thing, the "time left" dropped very quickly from 15 minutes down to 10 minutes down to 8 minutes. Hmmmmmm....

Anyways, everything is backed up and I have downloaded all of the XP drivers from Dell.com. It's midday on Sunday and I have some real work to take care of so I will probably not do the actual downgrade for another 2 weeks (next weekend is ACL). More then.

Sunday, September 14, 2008 - Very Underwhelming!

Everything's bigger in Texas, my ass! Is this what passes for severe weather here?? I've experienced *mild* versions of blizzards, monsoons, earthquakes and freezing rain that have caused more disruption than this... and I have experienced severe versions of the above have shut cities down! This sad little hurricane didn't even keep us in the house at all.

Saturday, September 13, 2008 - Ike Watch Austin

Well the hurricane has been downgraded to a category 1 hurricane and is as close to Austin as it's going to get. No excitement at all! Not that it is a bad thing :)

Saturday, September 13, 2008 - Ike Watch Austin, landfall

Well, Ike made landfall in Galvaston at around midnight last night. The wind picked up periodically through the night and made some noise but no big deal. It has actually calmed down a fair bit here. Whenever the wind stills, a bunch of birds take off... fleeing Houston perhaps??

There is still no rain tho... I am looking forward to getting my lawn watered! The wind doesn't help me at all!

Friday, September 12, 2008 - Ike Watch Austin, T minus 1 day

Honestly I am wondering why people are freaking out so much about Ike. How strong can a hurricane remain 200 miles inland??

Doing some poking around, I found some maps at the National Weather Service. As you can see there is almost no chance of us experiencing hurricane force winds and only a 50% chance that we will hit a paltry 39 knot wind.

Anyways, we are almost 200 miles inland... this thing will almost definitely not have official hurricane status and have been downgraded to a tropical storm or angry drizzle or something like that by the time it hits us.

The WunderMap is one of the better maps I have seen, in part because you can actually see where the cities are.

Thursday, September 11, 2008 - Ike Watch Austin, T minus 2 days

This is kind of exciting... I think a hurricane remains the one major weather phenomena that I've never experienced at (somewhat) close range.