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I was trying to put together that Aptiva that HKL sent me a while ago. Unfortunately, I didn't have any hard drives for it, so I tried that clunky 2GB drive that AV gave to me when he handed me his P200 MMX machine.
Well, it didn't work. I could hear the drive whine and complain as if it was a broken record, stuck on some impossible to release bit.
I had read up about a couple of grad students that were maintaining a very large supercomputer many years ago. I think I had a link to the story, but I can't find it ATM. Anyway, this machine was running 24/7 and one day there was a power failure for an hour or so. When the power came back up, the machine had problems booting since most of the hard drives failed. The students couldn't really figure out why they would fail like that, but came up with a theory: the grease in the drives must've been mostly lost due to the excessive use of the drives, and when the drives stopped and the grease cooled, the drives seized. To solve their problem, they had to jar the drives out of their current locked position so they dropped them.
They were able to get half of the drives working again.
So I decided to put that theory to test. I took the 2GB drive and dropped it on the floor. I picked it up and dropped it from a higher height just to make sure. I picked it up a third time and dropped it from an even higher height and it bounced and landed on my chair leg with a resounding (and satisfying) "thunk". I reattached the hard drive and powered up.
The hard drive came alive.
Holy son of a motherless goat! It even had an operating system on it! (Windows NT 4.) I guess I'm back in business. I think I'll leave the drive in the Aptiva since I want to make some sort of Win98 machine to get the internet camera thing working. (Darned camera doesn't have drivers for NT. Now all I need to do is to find my 98 SE installation disc..
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So I've gotten myself a new car; two actually. One is really old, the other is brand new. I've always wanted a sports car, even though these guys are as low on the sports car totem pole as you can go. It's not like I've got money to burn.
Things have progressed, and work has increased. But right now, I'm waiting. I'm waiting for issues to be resolved and events to conclude. For courage to return and plans to emerge. For an idea of what to do for the rest of my life..
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