2012 — 9 March: Friday

If at first you don't succeed1 the next thing to do is partially re-assemble the network drive and (with fingers crossed) resume the slow-motion file copying that seems to be all it's capable of. Still, if nothing else, it's a helluva lot better cooled and running on its side, which may turn out to be better for it.

My date with a scalpel...

... isn't until just before 11:00 so it's quite useful having a relatively mindless task to distract me. I also have my next crockpot to assemble. But I just can't figure out why the file transfer rate is so relatively slow. The actual drive is a Western Digital 1TB Caviar Green SATA device and there's no way it should be running so slowly, unless some component somewhere got (more than slightly) toasted in the last year or so. Mind you, I did clear two dead spiders and some form of small insect out of the case, so I dread to think where Christopher had been keeping it...

So far...

... so good. We shall see what it's like when the 'local' wears off. Having that injected, by the way, was by far the least nice part of the surgical entertainment. Nor was I guaranteed a Heidelburg-style duelling scar, though I did have to sign a consent form. I have to go back in a week to have the stitches out, and the report on the cells should be available shortly after that.

Meanwhile, I continue to suck files out of Christopher's disk at — relatively speaking — a snail's pace. But there are some goodies from Amazon to be examined. And, all too soon, lunch to be prepared.

After I'd shifted...

... a couple of A/V items around (and removed the troublesome Sony Freeview box as I was fed up of its now apparent unreliability as a stable digital radio) I watched as the Netgear media streamer automatically re-established itself on my network, which blew away Christopher's poorly network drive in the process. Two PC reboots later, I'm now taking great care to leave the network severely alone while I do this file copying. It's bad enough to see a file transfer speed of only 5MB/second or so without having to wait for Windows network discovery to try to weave its magic spells.

It's 14:53 and (as far as I can tell) the 'local' has worn off, with nary a twinge so far. That didn't stop me successfully playing the invalid sympathy card and persuading Junior to buy, and ship to me, the newly-released Blu-ray of Twiglet #4. Meanwhile, Mark Kermode has just made me giggle by confessing that he didn't find out, until college, that the phrase was "as the crow flies" and not "as the croath lies". Smooth.

While the disk...

... cools down again after the latest network failure, I can reveal this morning's "incoming" dollop of entertainment:

Book and films

Under the rainbow is about as non-PC as it is possible to imagine. Vibes is deeply weird. The book is the latest entrant in the "Hornblower in Space" saga. Colombiana is from a script by Luc Besson.

And while the disk...

... cools down yet again after the latest network failure, remind me not to buy one of these devices. It's 18:11, so I suppose I should turn my attention towards refilling my tum. Aah, but what with? That's the question.

[Pause] There comes a time in the 'life' of every piece of failing hardware when further struggle is pointless. I estimate I've retrieved somewhat more than 80% of the music files, but the network interface casing feels far too hot for comfort, so it's now offline and powered down for the rest of the evening. I shall retire into a book and some soothing music. It's 20:46 and I feel sure there's a cup of tea out there in the kitchen with my name on it.

The only discomfort so far from this morning's little scalpel work, by the way, is a very minor tightness due to either or both the surgical dressing and the handful of stitches. Not a painkiller in sight.

  

Footnote

1  And hanging Christopher's naked hard drive directly off my Linux PC last night was not a process that could be characterised as a success unless I became a politician.