Don't you hate computer crashes? Add your gripes here.

[steveo777]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

[JRNYMAN]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

LOL! Good luck with THAT one. Let me know how it works out for you.
Seriously though, I had a similar dilemma 2 years ago when I had to buy my daughter a laptop when she started ASU. Dell wasn't offering any of their products with any other OS than Vista pre-installed and I absolutely didn't want her to have to go through the motions of having to make the transition to Vista from XP just to then have to migrate to 7 when it dropped 6 mos. later. I went round and round with Dell and even asked for a system with no OS and a upgrade voucher for 7 when it was released but I lost. So, the day her laptop arrived, I formatted the hard drive, installed XP which she knew and liked then installed 7 when it came out.

[Rick]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

Vista was such an overbloated OS that it took a monster just to run it well. Windows 7 has a smaller footprint, or seems to, and runs very smoothly. I have a friend with Vista on his laptop and when I open the Task Manager on it, it shows around 80 processes running. At the time of this writing, Windows 7 shows 46. Laptops will have more processes than desktops, pared down to the minimum, because of extra hardware, such as touchpads, webcams and stuff like that, but I thought 80 was very excessive.

[JRNYMAN]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

Vista was such an overbloated OS that it took a monster just to run it well. Windows 7 has a smaller footprint, or seems to, and runs very smoothly. I have a friend with Vista on his laptop and when I open the Task Manager on it, it shows around 80 processes running. At the time of this writing, Windows 7 shows 46. Laptops will have more processes than desktops, pared down to the minimum, because of extra hardware, such as touchpads, webcams and stuff like that, but I thought 80 was very excessive.

That's pretty much in a nutshell what the problem is with Vista. It attempts to carry around every part of the OS on its shoulders at all times in an attempt to have preloaded what it thinks the user will need at any given time. Unfortunately, in doing so, it does exactly the opposite because it has so much baggage being lugged around that anything you attempt to do on your computer takes painfully long and if that's not bad enough, in its attempt to keep you safe from evil, it constantly warns you of the impending doom that could befall you if you continue with whatever it is you're attempting to do. Yes, you can disable some, not all, of that feature but it's still very annoying. Then there's the constant back-and-forth dance the end user must do to make any changes to your preferences, settings, etc. via the mandatory "Run as Administrator" bullshit even if you're the only one registered on the computer! 7 alleviates all of this bullshit and lets you, the computer's owner decide how and what you want to do. Additionally, it doesn't keep the kernel preloaded at all times and caches and purges redundantly and often so that it only has loaded what it needs at that moment which frees up as much of the PC's resources as it can so things run faster, smoother and easier. In a review I wrote about 7 shortly after beta testing it I called 7 a perfected and mature version of XP.

[Rip Rokken]

One of the most significant matters of securing any computer is security and BACKING UP! It takes a few minutes (depending on the size of the hard drive.) I've had some buddies system crash and I saved many of their personal belongings doing last second disk-cleanup and system restoring to back as much personal data that was needed.

Is this the same as periodically making a restore point?

Not exactly - System Restore allows you to partially roll your system back to a different point in time, but it doesn't back up or restore data... It's more along the lines of recovering the state of your operating system from a bad Windows update patch (they do happen), driver corruption, or virus infection. But most importantly, those restore points are stored on the same drive (under the 'System Volume Information' folder which is inaccessible by default. If the hard drive crashes, all your restore points, or any addl. types of backups you've done to the same drive, sink with the ship.

It's cool to backup certain things to the same hard drive (like some documents, Quicken data file, etc.) for quick access if needed, but it's not really a 'backup' that you can depend on unless it's done to separate media. If you really want true disaster recovery, keep some backups offsite. In case of fire or theft, any backup device left plugged into the PC is as good as gone, too.

[steveo777]

Redundancy is your friend.

[Rick]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

Vista was such an overbloated OS that it took a monster just to run it well. Windows 7 has a smaller footprint, or seems to, and runs very smoothly. I have a friend with Vista on his laptop and when I open the Task Manager on it, it shows around 80 processes running. At the time of this writing, Windows 7 shows 46. Laptops will have more processes than desktops, pared down to the minimum, because of extra hardware, such as touchpads, webcams and stuff like that, but I thought 80 was very excessive.

That's pretty much in a nutshell what the problem is with Vista. It attempts to carry around every part of the OS on its shoulders at all times in an attempt to have preloaded what it thinks the user will need at any given time. Unfortunately, in doing so, it does exactly the opposite because it has so much baggage being lugged around that anything you attempt to do on your computer takes painfully long and if that's not bad enough, in its attempt to keep you safe from evil, it constantly warns you of the impending doom that could befall you if you continue with whatever it is you're attempting to do. Yes, you can disable some, not all, of that feature but it's still very annoying. Then there's the constant back-and-forth dance the end user must do to make any changes to your preferences, settings, etc. via the mandatory "Run as Administrator" bullshit even if you're the only one registered on the computer! 7 alleviates all of this bullshit and lets you, the computer's owner decide how and what you want to do. Additionally, it doesn't keep the kernel preloaded at all times and caches and purges redundantly and often so that it only has loaded what it needs at that moment which frees up as much of the PC's resources as it can so things run faster, smoother and easier. In a review I wrote about 7 shortly after beta testing it I called 7 a perfected and mature version of XP.

Not to mention the wear it put on the machine. My friends laptops hard drive is constantly writing.

[steveo777]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

[JRNYMAN]

I'm thinking of replacing my bought version of Windows XP with a pirated copy of Windows 7. I just feel like being an asshole today.

RIP ROKKEN(TM) has said for years, If Microsoft reeeeeeally cared about fighting piracy, they'd lower the cost of their software, like by 75-80%. If more people could afford their stuff, more people would pay for it, plain and simple. Do what you gotta do, ya know? Me, I endlessly demo new versions. Just haven't made a decision to purchase anything yet.

Man, I'm kind of digging Windows 7. I've used XP since the earth cooled. It's a very nice upgrade. The version I have is Ultimate x64. That retails at $275 I see what you're talking about. Geesh. The Professional version is $115 though. That's more reasonable.

Was Vista that bad? I haven't had any issues with it except Internet Explorer. I use Firefox and it works well.

OMFG yes! It was so bad and people hated it and complained so much that MS issued refunds for people who purchased the Vista upgrade and wanted to go back to XP! They've NEVER done anything like that. The "OS Revert" as they called it wasn't highly publicized and you had to submit a form via their site to get the refund but yeah it was that bad.

I bought my new Dell laptop with Vista. I got no choice for an OS, since that was my only option on that machine at that price. Maybe they should offer me a free upgrade.

Vista was such an overbloated OS that it took a monster just to run it well. Windows 7 has a smaller footprint, or seems to, and runs very smoothly. I have a friend with Vista on his laptop and when I open the Task Manager on it, it shows around 80 processes running. At the time of this writing, Windows 7 shows 46. Laptops will have more processes than desktops, pared down to the minimum, because of extra hardware, such as touchpads, webcams and stuff like that, but I thought 80 was very excessive.

That's pretty much in a nutshell what the problem is with Vista. It attempts to carry around every part of the OS on its shoulders at all times in an attempt to have preloaded what it thinks the user will need at any given time. Unfortunately, in doing so, it does exactly the opposite because it has so much baggage being lugged around that anything you attempt to do on your computer takes painfully long and if that's not bad enough, in its attempt to keep you safe from evil, it constantly warns you of the impending doom that could befall you if you continue with whatever it is you're attempting to do. Yes, you can disable some, not all, of that feature but it's still very annoying. Then there's the constant back-and-forth dance the end user must do to make any changes to your preferences, settings, etc. via the mandatory "Run as Administrator" bullshit even if you're the only one registered on the computer! 7 alleviates all of this bullshit and lets you, the computer's owner decide how and what you want to do. Additionally, it doesn't keep the kernel preloaded at all times and caches and purges redundantly and often so that it only has loaded what it needs at that moment which frees up as much of the PC's resources as it can so things run faster, smoother and easier. In a review I wrote about 7 shortly after beta testing it I called 7 a perfected and mature version of XP.

Not to mention the wear it put on the machine. My friends laptops hard drive is constantly writing.

Oh most definitely. I wonder if Western Digital and/or Maxtor, Seagate, etc. did any MTBF tests using Vista to see if that OS would decrease the life of the hard drive due to the added heat and constant activity of the drive. Hmm... I know when Win 2000 came out, the hard drive mfrs. released a tiny little program they urged end users to download and install which helped to quiet their drives which were becoming increasing louder the longer it was subjected to the constant read/write commands that version of the NT Kernel. Occasionally I'll work on a system which has 2000 on it but has never had the hard drive patch applied (Western Digital drives are/were the most affected) and as soon as you boot the system it sounds like there's someone inside the case with an old IBM Selectric typewriter just going to town. I'm sure Rip's come across a few of those drives. It's a wonder some of them survived!

[JRNYMAN]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

Yup, that's absolutely correct. However, the transfer rate between a removable device and a hard drive is exponentially slower with the removable device which means it would take you painfully long periods of time to do what you would normally do on the fly with a hard drive installed. (Think dial-up vs. cable modem) The other thing is that USB drives only have the ability to read or write at one time - not both at the same time so you'd constantly be waiting and waiting with an hour glass next to your mouse with seemingly nothing happening on your PC. You'd get very frustrated very quickly. But, no... you don't need a hard drive installed in the system to operate it.
Now, FireWire on the other hand..... lightning fast, reads and writes simultaneously, HUGE data transfer rates...

[steveo777]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

Yup, that's absolutely correct. However, the transfer rate between a removable device and a hard drive is exponentially slower with the removable device which means it would take you painfully long periods of time to do what you would normally do on the fly with a hard drive installed. (Think dial-up vs. cable modem) The other thing is that USB drives only have the ability to read or write at one time - not both at the same time so you'd constantly be waiting and waiting with an hour glass next to your mouse with seemingly nothing happening on your PC. You'd get very frustrated very quickly. But, no... you don't need a hard drive installed in the system to operate it.
Now, FireWire on the other hand..... lightning fast, reads and writes simultaneously, HUGE data transfer rates...

Understood, they are slower, but, if one had a catastrophic failure like a dead drive, you could be back up really fast in an emergency. Enterprise computing does it differently, in that they have RAID with hot swappable drives, but for an individual user, or even a small business, this could come in handy to get by until you could get parts or service.

[JRNYMAN]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

Yup, that's absolutely correct. However, the transfer rate between a removable device and a hard drive is exponentially slower with the removable device which means it would take you painfully long periods of time to do what you would normally do on the fly with a hard drive installed. (Think dial-up vs. cable modem) The other thing is that USB drives only have the ability to read or write at one time - not both at the same time so you'd constantly be waiting and waiting with an hour glass next to your mouse with seemingly nothing happening on your PC. You'd get very frustrated very quickly. But, no... you don't need a hard drive installed in the system to operate it.
Now, FireWire on the other hand..... lightning fast, reads and writes simultaneously, HUGE data transfer rates...

Understood, they are slower, but, if one had a catastrophic failure like a dead drive, you could be back up really fast in an emergency. Enterprise computing does it differently, in that they have RAID with hot swappable drives, but for an individual user, or even a small business, this could come in handy to get by until you could get parts or service.

Perfect example. If memory serves, someone said a while back in this thread something to the effect that redundancy is your friend or something like that.

[steveo777]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

Yup, that's absolutely correct. However, the transfer rate between a removable device and a hard drive is exponentially slower with the removable device which means it would take you painfully long periods of time to do what you would normally do on the fly with a hard drive installed. (Think dial-up vs. cable modem) The other thing is that USB drives only have the ability to read or write at one time - not both at the same time so you'd constantly be waiting and waiting with an hour glass next to your mouse with seemingly nothing happening on your PC. You'd get very frustrated very quickly. But, no... you don't need a hard drive installed in the system to operate it.
Now, FireWire on the other hand..... lightning fast, reads and writes simultaneously, HUGE data transfer rates...

Understood, they are slower, but, if one had a catastrophic failure like a dead drive, you could be back up really fast in an emergency. Enterprise computing does it differently, in that they have RAID with hot swappable drives, but for an individual user, or even a small business, this could come in handy to get by until you could get parts or service.

Perfect example. If memory serves, someone said a while back in this thread something to the effect that redundancy is your friend or something like that.

Smart ass!

[JRNYMAN]

You know, I thought of something. Technically, I shouldn't need a hard drive, ie., if the drive in my laptop died. If I set my bios to boot from a USB device, I could have my OS boot from a removable hard drive. I could actually boot several different OS's, depending on which drive I had plugged in when it powered up. WinXp, Linux or 7. Hella cool. Nothing would be stored on the "computer" so to speak.

Yup, that's absolutely correct. However, the transfer rate between a removable device and a hard drive is exponentially slower with the removable device which means it would take you painfully long periods of time to do what you would normally do on the fly with a hard drive installed. (Think dial-up vs. cable modem) The other thing is that USB drives only have the ability to read or write at one time - not both at the same time so you'd constantly be waiting and waiting with an hour glass next to your mouse with seemingly nothing happening on your PC. You'd get very frustrated very quickly. But, no... you don't need a hard drive installed in the system to operate it.
Now, FireWire on the other hand..... lightning fast, reads and writes simultaneously, HUGE data transfer rates...

Understood, they are slower, but, if one had a catastrophic failure like a dead drive, you could be back up really fast in an emergency. Enterprise computing does it differently, in that they have RAID with hot swappable drives, but for an individual user, or even a small business, this could come in handy to get by until you could get parts or service.

Perfect example. If memory serves, someone said a while back in this thread something to the effect that redundancy is your friend or something like that.

Smart ass!

Awww, that was a sweet thing to say. Thank you.

[Rip Rokken]

Redundancy is your friend.

Unless you're in the U.K. - then it means you're getting fired.

[JRNYMAN]

Redundancy is your friend.

Unless you're in the U.K. - then it means you're getting fired.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more.

Hey Rip! How's tricks? I started to think you had resigned yourself from this riveting and oh-so-exciting thread.

I even dropped your name in a couple of my replies to try and bait you but it didn't work apparently.

[steveo777]

I was getting ready to throw away an old hard drive today. I took it all apart then, smashed the platters with a hammer.
Speaking of crashes and dead drives......I killed one ma self.

[Rip Rokken]

Redundancy is your friend.

Unless you're in the U.K. - then it means you're getting fired.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more.

Hey Rip! How's tricks? I started to think you had resigned yourself from this riveting and oh-so-exciting thread.

I even dropped your name in a couple of my replies to try and bait you but it didn't work apparently.

Hey, bro - no, just been tied up with some major projects and have been unplugged for the most part while I try to plow thru. I did purchase one thing yesterday which I now consider essential equipment for anyone in our field, and will be using it frequently:



No reason to keep strapped onto a collision course for a stroke before 50 if I can help it.

[Rip Rokken]

I was getting ready to throw away an old hard drive today. I took it all apart then, smashed the platters with a hammer.
Speaking of crashes and dead drives......I killed one ma self.

Good work... hammers are great, as are drills. I've been meaning to use a few for target practice too.

[JRNYMAN]

Redundancy is your friend.

Unless you're in the U.K. - then it means you're getting fired.

Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge. Say no more, say no more.

Hey Rip! How's tricks? I started to think you had resigned yourself from this riveting and oh-so-exciting thread.

I even dropped your name in a couple of my replies to try and bait you but it didn't work apparently.

Hey, bro - no, just been tied up with some major projects and have been unplugged for the most part while I try to plow thru. I did purchase one thing yesterday which I now consider essential equipment for anyone in our field, and will be using it frequently:



No reason to keep strapped onto a collision course for a stroke before 50 if I can help it.

Jesus H. Christ, brosef! I realize there's a fair amount of stress in our line of work (even more when the customers don't pay... ) but isn't that a bit over the top? If I knew you were already circling the drain, I'd have contacted some of the great people I've met here and chipped in on a HoverRound for you!

[JRNYMAN]

I was getting ready to throw away an old hard drive today. I took it all apart then, smashed the platters with a hammer.
Speaking of crashes and dead drives......I killed one ma self.

Good work... hammers are great, as are drills. I've been meaning to use a few for target practice too.

Ahhhh drills! My implement of destruction of choice. Nothing says "FUCK YOU" like driving a very large, very gnarly screw through a hard drive... but I can see how target practice could bring a certain amount of satisfaction as well. And now that I think about it a bit more, maybe Steveo is on to something with the hammer thing. THAT would certainly allow you to bring physical satisfaction into the mix as well as releasing some pent-up stress/anger.... excuse me for a couple of minutes.... I'm gonna go grab a hard drive or two from the defective bin as well as my mini sledge.... I'll get back to you in a few.

[Rip Rokken]

No reason to keep strapped onto a collision course for a stroke before 50 if I can help it.

Jesus H. Christ, brosef! I realize there's a fair amount of stress in our line of work (even more when the customers don't pay... ) but isn't that a bit over the top? If I knew you were already circling the drain, I'd have contacted some of the great people I've met here and chipped in on a HoverRound for you! [/quote]

There is a tremendous amount of stress with expectations, deadlines, and ridiculous hours with my job. I pulled a shift from 8:00am until 5:30am the next morning Friday and Saturday -- that doesn't happen very often, but it's necessary sometimes. I've been doing my best to battle stress for the past few years, and it requires making absolute peace with the fact that you can't do that and avoid pissing people off. The "instant availability" thing has to go to some degree. When you're already totally tied up and have a heap left on the plate to go, and there is an office staff who can assist with communication, I've had to start just "unplugging" from the endless communication frenzy during the day... ignoring my phone, inbox, etc. so I can concentrate without constant interruption or news that someone else is pounding the table. Screw all that... What I've found is that people are absolutely willing to wait, and the world does not end for them or for me if they don't hear back immediately.

But on top of all that, there are the other triggers that contribute... too many Mexican restaurants because they are plentiful and fast. Thank god I've already eliminated Chinese super buffets by about 99%. And not enough exercise because I'm too exhausted to do anything but crank back in a recliner and watch TV until 2am when I get home.

Anyway, my blood pressure isn't really considered "high", but it's pushing a concerning level. Last two readings averaged 138/81. I spent a good amount of time the past couple of days working out, relaxing, and changing my diet. Starting to experiment with Yoga, which a bunch of my co-workers have also seemed interested in. Drinking a lot of green tea now, which has really helped my energy levels and focus (and mood, amazingly). Going to start doing much more of the Mediterranean thing than the South American thing for diet. It will all pay off.

I'm not in bad shape at all... just need to make some adjustments to ensure that I'll live forever like I plan to.

[JRNYMAN]

No reason to keep strapped onto a collision course for a stroke before 50 if I can help it.

Jesus H. Christ, brosef! I realize there's a fair amount of stress in our line of work (even more when the customers don't pay... ) but isn't that a bit over the top? If I knew you were already circling the drain, I'd have contacted some of the great people I've met here and chipped in on a HoverRound for you!

There is a tremendous amount of stress with expectations, deadlines, and ridiculous hours with my job. I pulled a shift from 8:00am until 5:30am the next morning Friday and Saturday -- that doesn't happen very often, but it's necessary sometimes. I've been doing my best to battle stress for the past few years, and it requires making absolute peace with the fact that you can't do that and avoid pissing people off. The "instant availability" thing has to go to some degree. When you're already totally tied up and have a heap left on the plate to go, and there is an office staff who can assist with communication, I've had to start just "unplugging" from the endless communication frenzy during the day... ignoring my phone, inbox, etc. so I can concentrate without constant interruption or news that someone else is pounding the table. Screw all that... What I've found is that people are absolutely willing to wait, and the world does not end for them or for me if they don't hear back immediately.

But on top of all that, there are the other triggers that contribute... too many Mexican restaurants because they are plentiful and fast. Thank god I've already eliminated Chinese super buffets by about 99%. And not enough exercise because I'm too exhausted to do anything but crank back in a recliner and watch TV until 2am when I get home.

Anyway, my blood pressure isn't really considered "high", but it's pushing a concerning level. Last two readings averaged 138/81. I spent a good amount of time the past couple of days working out, relaxing, and changing my diet. Starting to experiment with Yoga, which a bunch of my co-workers have also seemed interested in. Drinking a lot of green tea now, which has really helped my energy levels and focus (and mood, amazingly). Going to start doing much more of the Mediterranean thing than the South American thing for diet. It will all pay off.

I'm not in bad shape at all... just need to make some adjustments to ensure that I'll live forever like I plan to. [/quote]

Man you sure know how to bring down an otherwise upbeat, humorous thread don't ya?! I'll bet you're in high demand for wedding receptions and kids' parties...

Just bustin' your balls my brother. I hear ya about the "preventative" angle. At 46 I've definitely found that shedding the unwanted pounds takes exponentially longer and more work than it did even just 5 years ago. High blood pressure and diabetes run rampant in my Irish family and although I don't drink more than about a 12-pack per year, I do still smoke which of course can compound everything. One thing I have done is to alter my diet. Until not very long ago, I was a cream sauce, sour cream, mayo, dairy on everything kinda guy. Then I went to an exhibit they had at the Natural History museum here in PHX a couple of months ago which featured the human body revealed - you've probably seen it or know of it. They basically take indiviuals who have willed their body to science and peel back the layers and expose what various parts of it look like when time and abuse is added. Not pretty, not pretty at all. The parts that scared the shit of me were the damage to lungs from smoking and what arteries look like after someone like the me I described above gets a hold of them! I saw the amount of plaque and build-up that takes place and knew I was literally just a few more "add sour cream" orders from a triple bypass situation.

Check your email when you have time please.

Steve

[Greg]

I am really surprised your school doesn't have all of their computers networked to a file server that automatically backs up files on a nightly basis. It's pretty much basic I.T. / Networking 101. That is unfortunate.

The problem with Flash drives is that they are easily corrupted and easily lost. If you're going to back stuff up on storage, make sure it's redundant and switch out the external every other night.