Precious memories, unreliable media

My friend Jennifer just got back from her trip to Africa, Amsterdam and Paris. Upon arrival back in the US she discovered that her pictures on her camera were not accessible. Knowing how important the photographs from a once in a lifetime trip can be, I offered my assistance.

I asked her to bring the camera to the Continental Club last night so I could work my magic. Initially she thought it might just be the camera that was the problem. By this time it would not even turn on. I figured I could put the memory card in my computer and perhaps see the files and be able to pull them down to my computer.

No joy. When I plugged the card into my camera the indicator flashed that the memory was completely full but when I  tried to view the contents the camera reported that there were no files. Yuk!

I gave Jennifer her camera and took the disk home. When I connected the camera to my laptop and attempted to view the contents of the card what I saw was none too encouraging…

Gibberish

 

Nothing but gibberish. The good news was that my computer could see the data, the bad news was that it looked fairly corrupted.

I have worked on regular hard drives and on floppy disks to recover data, but never on a flash memory card. I wasn’t 100% sure if I could do it on my own but I decided to give it a try.

I had recently been given a copy of Data Recovery Wizard Pro 2.0 to review and have not had the opportunity to play with it. This would be my test subject.

I installed the software and went through the steps and what do you know? I was able to recover about 95-98% of the images from the disk!

Success!

Ah, the satisfaction of overcoming adversity! I look forward to giving Jennifer the CD with the recovered files on it.

 

Colored lights can hypnotize

Our instore performance at Sig’s Lagoon went very well. There is a photographer who shoots at the Continental Club and uses a lot of pro-gear. He shot our performance and sent me some of the results. I like this one the best.

He did some other cool shots in black and white and one where he left my shirt in color. You can see those in the Flying Fish Sailors gallery.

Cynthia strikes again

The bar area between the kitchen and the main living area was lacking something….BAR STOOLS!

Over the years we have casually shopped for them. You can easily spend $250-$400 a piece for nice ones at The Billiard Factory or some other specialty furniture store.

We finally decided to buy some plain ones from the unfinished furniture store down the road.

Cynthia figured she could paint them to match the color scheme and make some custom cushions.
They came out very nice!

Tech support frustration demystified

Sarah (aka Chaobell), fellow techie and creator of the web comic /usr/bin/w00t recently posted a very good description of a tech support call of the type that drives us techs nuts.

Rather than describing it using technical jargon she used a mundane subject to illustrate the point. I think it describes things quite nicely…

Let’s say you do technical support for, say, Peter Pan Peanut Butter. A customer calls in, who’s supposedly been making peanut butter sandwiches for five years, having some trouble. The conversation goes something like this:

“Good morning, thank you for calling Peter Pan technical support, my name is Sarah, how can I help you today? … … …ooookay, your child is throwing his peanut butter sandwich back at you because there’s no peanut butter on it. Can you open up the sandwich for me? …. … …could you take one piece of bread in each hand and pull them apart so you can look inside the sandwich? … … …there’s no peanut butter on the outside of the sandwich. No, ma’am, it’s supposed to be like that. I need you to look INSIDE. THE. SANDWICH. …yes, like that, thank you. Do you see any peanut butter INSIDE THE SANDWICH? … … …peanut butter looks like light brown sticky stuff smeared over one or both pieces of bread, and it may or may not have peanut chunks in it. ………you do see peanut butter? Good, now–you see shiny translucent purple stuff. No, ma’am, that is not peanut butter, that is jelly. DO YOU SEE BROWN STUFF IN THE SANDWICH? …no! Okay, you’ll need to put peanut butter on the bread. … … …you put peanut butter on the bread by scooping peanut butter out of the jar with a knife and smearing it onto the bread. … … …you can’t get the peanut butter on the bread. Can you elaborate for me? …do you see a jar in front of you that says “Peter Pan Peanut Butter?” …no. …….you see such a jar in the pantry on the other side of the kitchen. Please go and get the jar. …….the knife won’t go in. Did you remove the lid? ……..you remove the lid by grasping it in one hand, holding the jar in the other hand, and twisting the lid in a counter-clockwise direction. ……no, ma’am, that’s clockwise. Turn the lid so that the edge facing away from you moves to your left. …..YOUR OTHER LEFT. Is the lid off now? Good. Dip the knife in th–there’s a paper thing in the way. Peel the paper thing off. NO, DO NOT PUT THE PAPER THING IN THE SANDWICH. IT IS NOT EDIBLE. THROW IT AWAY. …..IN THE TRASH. NOW. SCOOP PEANUT BUTTER OUT OF THE JAR WITH THE KNIFE. THE OTHER END OF THE KNIFE. …the peanut butter won’t go on the bread. Press the peanut butter on the knife against the bread. … … … …then get another piece of bread out of the bag. Now wipe the knife on the bread until the peanut butter that is on the knife is on the bread. …..now, is there peanut butter on the bread? Good! We’re almost done. Now take the other piece of bread with the jelly on it, and put the two pieces of bread together with the peanut butter and jelly on the inside. … … …there! You’re done! Tha…. … …the sandwich is sticking to the plate and there’s jelly all over your hands. Look at the sandwich and tell me exactly what you see. …..there’s jelly on top of it, and peanut butter smushing out from under it. …no, ma’am, remember what I said about how there wasn’t supposed to be any peanut butter on the outside of the sandwich? …yes, that’s right. Peel the bread off the plate. Turn it so that the peanut butter is facing UP. Got it? …up. NO, UP. DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE SKY IS? THAT’S UP! TURN THE PEANUT BUTTER TOWARDS THE SKY! …good! Now turn the bread with the jelly so the jelly faces down. …DOWN. TOWARDS YOUR FEET. GOOD. NOW PUT THE BREAD WITH THE JELLY ON TOP OF THE BREAD WITH THE PEANUT BUTTER. … … …GOOD! NOW GIVE THE SANDWICH TO YOUR CHILD. …Ma’am, I don’t know which child, the one that wanted the peanut butter sandwich… was it a girl or a boy? … …DID THE CHILD HAVE A PENIS? YES? THAT IS YOUR SON. GIVE THE SANDWICH TO YOUR SON YES THAT’S IT YOU’RE DONE OKAY THANKYOUFORCALLINGPETERPANPEANUTBUTTER
HAVEANICEDAYGOODBYE!”

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Impromptu goodness

Members of my band (The Flying Fish Sailors for those not in the know) are playing an impromptu show at Sig’s Lagoon on Wednesday night, jan 25th.

It’s going to be Jim, Greg and myself from 9:15 to 10:00 pm.

It’s part of Greg’s birthday celebration going on that evening.

If you have a chance, stop on by as it’s open to the public and free.

Sig’s is located on the 3700 block of Main right between The Continental Club and The Big Top.

A fond farewell

I support a LOT of users here at my company. Many local and many out in the field.
There’s some turn over, there always is in a company this size.
When a remote or field employee departs the company they have to send me their
computer gear for processing back into inventory.

One of our federal sales guys recently left and when his computer was delivered today I found a bottle of Grey Goose L’Orange Vodka with a thank you note for all the times I’ve helped him in the past.

Now I have to fend off my co-workers till I can get it home.