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eftychia at 02:50am on 2005-03-10Feel like crap. Disoriented. Slept through rehearsal -- had fallen asleep late afternoon 'cause I didn't feel so hot then, and struggled to wake up after my alarm went off in the evening, convinced at first that it was 12 hours later than it was and I had already missed rehearsal. Noticed sky was wrong colour for 7 AM, tried harder to pull my brain together, failed, fell back asleep, and missed rehearsal after all. :-( And we've got two shows on Saturday. Remember trying to wake up at least enough to call or SMS bandmates to say I wasn't coming, but cannot remember whether I succeeded -- will check my phone after I post this to find out. Woke again a couple of hours ago, I think, but it was that kind of half-awake that's hard to tell from a dream if it doesn't last long enough. As I type this, the world is gradually fading into sense and reality around me, starting with the keyboard I'm typing on and rippling out from there. Excruciating lower back pain, which I'll medicate once I feel able to make it downstairs. (Didn't take painkillers earlier 'cause I wasn't hurting so badly then, just ordinary-for-me pain levels and extreme fatigue.) Need to pull myself together enough to deal with the litter box and take out the trash, but I think I'm going to set my goals low for the rest of the night & morning, and not try to do any more than that.
Really [expletive]ing annoyed at my body right now. Quite frustrated. Angrysad. Not happy.
Perrine is keeping me company. I remember that the first time lower back pain woke me tonight and I rolled onto my stomach, she curled up on the small of my back and played heating pad, even staying put the first couple of times I changed position, but after that she decided I'd moved too many times and slept beside me instead. Usually when she sits on my back she winds up a few inches from the spot where I need her warmth; this time she was right on the part that hurts the most. Now that I've rolled over to type, she's moved to my thigh.
After a week or so of looking through backup tapes for an intact copy of the large QotD queue that got corrupted, my ISP has reported that they couldn't find a good copy (which makes me wonder what their backup policy/procedure is for user files -- but I'm not sure how to ask without sounding like I'm being snippy about it). I've still got a copy of the corrupted file just in case it turns out that the original data are still in there and just need the right mathematical key to unscramble. It's probably not -- while none of the explanations I can imagine for how it got scrozzled seem at all likely, the idea that it got overwritten by some random binary seems less unlikely than the notion that it got its bits scrambled in some reversible way -- but the fact that it's about the same size as the original tickles the back of my brain and makes me wonder. (Anyone feel like poking at it as a puzzle? I can supply a recurring string to look for...)
I understand why the reports/forecasts at Weather Underground are set to automatically refresh every so often -- especially the radar & satellite images -- but I'm not sure why a static news story does so. It's not a huge page (two tiny ads that don't seem to change, a few small/medium photos) but it's still annoying over dialup. (The story's annoying too. Apparently playing D&D and other FRPGs is a sign of mental weakness that makes one a poor security risk according to the Israel Defense Forces, and is indistinguishable from LARPing (it's not clear whether the IDF confuses the two, but the news site does), which makes me wonder whether people who attend murder-mystery themed dinner parties are considered similarly "mentally weak". And either D&D remains incredibly popular over there, or a lot of other RPGs are being referred to as "D&D") Ah, something other than my body to be annoyed by.
Alrighty then -- I think I'm awake enough now to go get food and painkillers and deal with the trash. I'm still feeling a little out-of-phase with reality and having to remind myself what day it is, but less so than when I started typing this.
(no subject)
Pose as a prospective customer (or get a friend to do it) and ask along with other questions about their service.
How long was the file corrupt before you reported it to them? If you can tell them that, as of the day you reported the problem, the file had been corrupt for less than $SMALL_INTEGER days, and ask for the list of available backup copies, and add that as you're paying a third party to try to recover the data, all available versions of the file that they corrupted might be helpful, you might get a good snapshot of (a) what their actual backup policy is, and (b) whether they are likely to damage other files of yours.
You can also ask them what software upgrades they did on the system during the time in question, since that may well be part of the problem.
Of course, once you determine that you have gotten as much assistance out of them as you can expect to get, you can consider publishing a web page detailing your experience with them and how it does (or does not) correlate with the backup policies that they claim when trying to impress potential customers.
As a side thought, is it possible that the database program *encrypted* your data file?
QotD file
Maybe I'll try the "pose as a new customer" thing and see what I can find out.
"As a side thought, is it possible that the database program *encrypted* your data file?"
My "database program" in this case is csplit + sed + cat + the Unix filesystem:And the timestamp on the file was about six hours later than the last time the cron script had run. I'm wondering whether it's possible that a hiccup in SunOS could have caused someone else's file to be written to the inodes allocated to my LJQUOTEFILE while leaving the directory entry for my file still pointing to those places on the disk ...?
(Yes, I know that script could be tightened up a little, but it was a quick&dirty hack that I haven't gotten around to getting back to. (And for folks other than Aliza, who already knows this: yes, most of my quick&dirty hacks in languages other than old Microsoft BASIC have comments in them.))
BTW, I've thought about moving to a DBMS-oriented approach for ease of queue-maintenance, but keep not getting around to it 'cause editing the queue with vi, even when I'm rearranging it, hasn't been painful enough to shift the idea of a rewrite from "would be cool" to "solves a problem". But I do have some ideas for database maneuvers that would make pasting in a new quote a little more automatic.
(no subject)
Really [expletive]ing annoyed at my body right now. Quite frustrated. Angrysad. Not happy.
*gentle hug*
(no subject)