altivo: (rocking horse)
Altivo ([personal profile] altivo) wrote2011-03-19 09:09 pm

Giant moon night

Tonight is the perigee full moon. The moon is at it's closest point to the earth and also full. These two conditions coincide only about once every 19 or 20 years. The moon will look about 14% larger and appear 30% brighter than it does when at its greatest distance. It was certainly bright enough last night to cast shadows and read by. I can't say about tonight, because we are overcast. If you have a clear sky be sure to take a look.

After repeated experiments with CHKDSK, none of which ran to completion, I gave up. Every sure-fire cure offered by web pages and individuals made no difference at all. CHKDSK on Gary's drive simply stalls near the start of phase 2 and sits there. I let it sit for more than eight hours on the last attempt, with no sign of progress. The task was using no CPU cycles and a fixed amount of memory when I killed it.

Instead, I went into the Windows Registry and altered the autocheck invocation on boot up so that it will no longer try to check that drive. Gary was finally able to retrieve his files from the drive, and so far all have been intact and usable. Once he has all the files he needs off, we'll try formatting the drive. It's a 1.5 TB SATA drive, so I expect a low level format will take many hours too. It's under warranty, so if it won't format, we'll get it replaced.

Not as springlike today as I'd hoped, but at least it was sunny. Birds are coming to life: cardinals and robins singing, blackbirds calling, woodpeckers drumming. I saw a huge hawk late this afternoon, circling and circling overhead. Probably hoping for a try at one of the neighbors' kids...

Oh, and I see we now have Obama's war to add to Bush's wars that are not yet resolved. While I agree it is time for Qaddafi to give up his power in Libya, the hypocrisy of the US accusations and behaviors in this are just too overwhelming for words.
davv: The bluegreen quadruped. (Default)

[personal profile] davv 2011-03-20 10:44 am (UTC)(link)
I saw the moon last night! It was easier to spot than usual, and looked larger too.

After all those once-in-a-decade things (full equinoxes and the likes) I've missed because it's almost always been overcast over here at the interesting days, it's a nice thing to be able to see something for once!

After repeated experiments with CHKDSK, none of which ran to completion, I gave up.

I seem to remember getting those problems once, when I was still working at [badly managed place X] fixing computers. CHKDSK got locked in a loop saying something about $0. The trick in that case was to force CHKDSK to skip that check, fix the rest, then do a full fix... but by what you're saying, seems like it's no longer relevant since you're just going to wipe the disk :)

Oh, and I see we now have Obama's war to add to Bush's wars that are not yet resolved.

At least it's more like Clinton's war (Kosovo) than Bush's. It's not just "let's introduce democracy by the barrel of a gun!", and there's actual UN backing.