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Kat Scratch Fever Posts

Repartitioning Adventures!

Published Feb 10, 2009

So, I decided that I wanted to play with the Windows 7 beta, but that I didn’t want to overwrite my operating system on either computer.

I started with Bob 1.0, my poor sweet 5 year old computer with Windows XP on it. I used GParted off of a CD-Boot of Ubuntu to shrink the partition on my main drive and then partition the new, un-partitioned space left by the shrink process. Windows 7 took ages to install, and ran a little slow on Bob 1, but certainly ran much faster than I expected it to run in the first place. I half-way didn’t expect it to install at all.

So last night I decided to shrink the partition on my storage drive in Bob 2.0 (my much newer computer) and poke around on that. I have no idea why, but the process didn’t go NEARLY as smoothly on this computer. Some of you may have seen my panicked Tweets about it. Oh, then then to make it worse, I discovered that Vista has tools to do this built in, well after the fact :|

So anyway, I guess when Windows Vista first partitioned the drive, it left blank space at the very beginning of the drive. When I went to shrink the partition, it decided that it wanted to move the partition to the left. So it took 2 hours to read my partition (why?!) and another 2 and a half to move it and create the new partition.

So I cleaned my bathroom while I waited, since I’m moving in a couple of weeks and have to clean it at some point anyway. I kid you not, that bathroom is positively SPOTLESS. Even the crazy muddy parts of the bathtub where Xoie puts her paws. I had a lot of time to kill.

Anyway, 4.5 hours later when I could use my computer again, I went to get some pictures of my camera (The bathroom only killed about an hour) and Lightroom started freaking out at me. “ZOMG I can’t find your catalog!” … well, said catalog is stored on my storage drive that I just manipulated the partitions on. So I go to My Computer, and while I could see the new G: partition.. the original partition was nowhere to be found. I just about died. I panicked and mourned my lost data, then started wondering “well.. if the data is gone… where the heck is the 350 gigs of space?!”

So i went into the drive manager, and found my data partition! Yay! Windows had arbitrarily reassigned drive letters and changed it from Z: to F: which made it get lost, because F belongs to one of my removable devices (I think it’s my Rebel, iirc). So I changed the drive letter back to Z and I could access all my data and Lightroom stopped spazzing out.

So I did my photo stuff and set Windows 7 installing and went to bed, cause it was about 1 in the morning at that point.

So yet again, I haven’t gotten a chance to really poke around with Windows 7 but it looks pretty sweet from what I’ve done so far. I’ll be playing with it and will likely write a post about it in the near-ish future.

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Finding Long Lost Love

Published Feb 5, 2009

Anybody that knows anything about my gaming history knows that Everquest was my first love. I played for a good 3 1/2 years, and while I was a very casual gamer (seriously. we exist!), I really enjoyed the game.

When my guild jumped ship and went to play World of Warcraft, I basically hung up my MMORPG hat. I played WoW and EQII for a couple months but didn’t like either one.

Well, the boy and I had been entertaining the notion of reactivating our accounts on some game lately, to casually run around and kill stuff every now and then. We were reminiscing with other people that had played and the such.

Yesterday I randomly remembered my EQ log-in name. After some digging, I figured out where my password recovery email wound up, activated my account and logged in this morning. My characters are still there!

… my level 65 monk is in Qvic, by herself. I don’t even know if it’s safe there. Then it came back to me. We had finished a raid, and I camped right there because I planned on never logging in again. Well… 5 years is almost like forever, right? I’m currently brainstorming on how to get her out of there alive, because I don’t remember anything about the zone.

Anyway, I logged into a low level character in a safe place and looked around, and honest to God, it’s like I never left. Everything looks exactly the same. I even remembered how to move. I’m amused.

So we’ll see how this plan works. We only expect to play maybe twice a week… it could be fun Remind me later to tell the story about how I first got into playing EQ; it’s pretty funny.

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Sorry for RSS Spam

Published Jan 28, 2009

So, since Google acquired FeedBurner, which is what I use for my feeds, the feeds are being migrated to a new server or some jazz like that. Apparently the transfer of my feed is not going smoothly, and so it’s been repropogated or something a couple of times, which means my entries keep showing up as new on my feed, which then means it winds up in your feed readers multiple times.

Sorry about that :(

Hopefully it’ll be sorted out soon… I don’t think there’s anything I can do to help though.

Actually. It might help if you change your subscription for my site from http://feeds.feedburner.com/katscratchfever to http://feeds2.feedburner.com/katscratchfever (some RSS readers may be having a problem with the temporary redirect from the old URL to the new one).

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Computer Upgrade Time

Published Jan 15, 2009

So, with the impending release of The Sims 3, I’ve been carefully scrutinizing the hardware in my computer, and have come to realize that while it was sufficient a year and a half ago when I bought it (read: “good enough”), I am quickly outgrowing the system.

Which leaves me in a slightly uncomfortable position, having bought a pre-built Dell computer. They don’t exactly make changing hardware the easiest thing sometimes. However, it’s not under warranty or anything like that, so I’m just going to trust my previous hands on experience and have at it. Worst case scenario, my computer blows up. (…. wait, that would suck. umm…)

Anyway, I’ve already added more memory, an extra hard drive and added a FireWire port, which was easy.

Now I’m looking to replace the processor (mine doesn’t even meet the system requirements), which makes me nervous. Lots of little pins and stuff… if I have to replace the motherboard I might as well just build a new computer (which, I can’t, as much as I would love to). I’m looking to get the Intel E8400 (3.0 ghz dual core that runs circles around my current 1.7 dual core). It’s”cheap” but still good.

While I was looking at that, my buddy Shawn pointed out that my video card sucks. This is lower on my priority list (despite his protests) because while yes, it’s not the greatest video card on earth, it *is* on the list of supported video cards for Sims 3, while my processor is lacking in ghz. I do, however, want a new one because mine wasn’t that good when I bought it, so now it’s really subpar. I haven’t started looking too much at those yet; any suggestions? (nothing too fancy though; I do, after all, work a mediocre job :p)

These upgrades will also make the video-editing process not suck so much, and I may actually make more frequent use of my video camera

So now, mostly I’m crossing my fingers that the IRS is good to me and brings me a decent refund when I file my taxes. W-2’s take too long. /waits impatiently.

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Hello Visitors from Jodifur!

Published Jan 9, 2009

Hello to everybody stopping by today from the post about my super cute skull high heels that are posted for Shoe Friday 13 at Jodifer! Please make yourself comfortable, have a look around, and I hope some of you come back again later

For anybody that is curious about where the shoes came from… I have no idea actually, they were a gift. I love them very much. For the record though, I can’t walk in them very well because I am a klutz. I try anyway. I have not broken my ankle yet in them :D

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