the lengths i go to just to skip work! ;)

backtracking for a bit, friday was the geek gathering. via a conversation during the show wednesday, i had made a joke about wearing a “wanna cyber?” t-shirt to the gathering. after i got home from work, i spent about 15 minutes making one with a white t-shirt and a black sharpie. i have a pic of it that i may post later sometime.
this past tuesday as i was about to leave work i got an email from a p.a. employee asking about the status of a video server i’d set up. i figured the video process had stopped, so i went to ssh into it…no response. so i pinged the box…no response. at this point i contacted someone who could check on the system through an admin interface. we both tried looking at it, but the slot labeled for my system was showing a windows system. we thought maybe the console interface was messed up, but eventually i asked her to go ahead and reboot it. a windows 2003 box booted up. so i had to call the guy who is the main admin for that system. i explained what was going on and what slot i was checking, and he then realized he’d given the wrong slot number to someone and they had evidently done a windows install over my *nix box. “oopsie.” so after waiting for the main admin to do a base *nix install for me again, i had to spend a few hours tuesday evening getting everything installed and functioning as it had been before it got vaporized. that was certainly fun.
i was trying to decide if it was the windows gods trying to push me further towards running and using windows, in their own peculiar windowsy way, or if it was the *nix gods punishing me for installing windows 2000 and windows xp recently at home.
and regarding those installs, i spent some amount of time last week trying to get my old desktop running again. (this is the desktop that my hard drive fritzed on back in 2004.) based on previous experience leading me to think the ide controller might be bad, i decided i’d try a sata drive since it has two sata connectors. after pulling the old sata drive out of my power mac, i plugged it into the old desktop and started the xp install. but xp couldn’t find the drive. i went online to find the manual for the motherboard and it turns out the sata connectors can only be used in conjunction with the promise raid chipset. at first i was disheartened, but then i realized i could just make a raid 0 volume with 1 disk and try it. i set that up and started the xp install, but it still couldn’t find the disk. i did a google search and realized i’d need to hit f6 during the xp install in order to give it the promise raid driver so it could see the disk. i downloaded the raid driver (along with all other drivers, software, and manuals available for the mb on the asus site) and burned it all to a cd. i started the xp install and hit f6 at the appropriate point…then it wanted me to put the disk in a: and hit enter. well, “a:” is a floppy drive. and it wouldn’t look anywhere else except “a:”. *sigh* i’ve got floppies and a drive, but i really didn’t feel like doing that, so i gave up on that path for now.
so i got a known good 250 gig ide hard drive and plugged it in where the old drive had been, but the xp install format failed. so i switched eide cables, but it failed again. so i switched to an old 40-pin ide cable, but format with that also failed. so i’m still under the opinion that the ide controller is bad. next i’ll put the hard drive on the second controller (which is where the cd-rom is) and see if the format fails. if it continues to fail, it’s possible it’s the power supply i guess. but pretty soon i’m just going to give up on the motherboard and move on.
back to the recent past now, yesterday was pretty uneventful. i mostly laid in bed and slept quite a bit. the potts clan came by after church and brought me a sub from subway, and before they left sue re-dressed my wound. it still looked about the same. and the swelling was about the same. later in the afternoon i called my insurance company to tell them about the wreck and start the claim process. (fortunately, i’d kept full coverage even though i paid off the bike a couple of years ago.) the lady was pleasant and took all of the information and said an agent would be calling me the next day before noon. later in the evening the potts dropped me off a ham and cheese omelet from house of pies.
today i was in and out most of the morning. the progressive agent called and got some more info from me. she said i’d need to call the tow company to release the bike so progressive could pick it up. i called them, but they said i had to fax my driver’s license and signature to them or come by in person. i believe “sh!t.” was my response. i called the progressive rep back and explained the situation, but i told her if she had email i might be able to get a scanner here at my house working and scan stuff and email it to her, then she could fax it to them. fortunately, the hrc is a contract employee so she has flexible hours, so in the afternoon she agreed to come by and help me. i decided i kind of wanted to get out of the house, so she drove me over to the tow place (which it turns out is right across the street from the new saint arnold’s brewery, so i got to see them working on it.)
i hobbled up to the window and signed the release, but then i decided since i was there i wanted to see how the bike looked. they let me go back and look at it. when i got to it, the right side was the side facing me. that’s the side that dropped onto the pavement. it didn’t look too bad really, other than my highway peg extender being bent. i could see the front tire was either blown out or the bead had been broken, and the headlight was broken and dangling. the right mirror was bent around, but it might have just swiveled and not actually be bent. and i could see the aftermarket license plate holder and blinkers had broken and was dangling by the electric cables. but the side that hit the car was much worse. the gas tank was dented up. the mirror was broken off. the front fender (which i’d just replaced) had a dent on the back of it. and i could see the front forks were bent. it’s possible i might be forgetting some damage, but it had a fair bit of stuff wrong. i should have some pics that i might be able to put up soon.
once we left, i called the progressive agent to let her know they could come by and pick up the bike. they are supposed to be taking it to honda of northwest houston i believe. from there we went through the chick-fil-a drive thru and i picked up some food to bring home. the hrc brought me a couple of ice packs and a foam wedge that elevates your feet. (she has all kinds of stuff due to her many surgeries and back problems.) the wedge is really nice. my hip was started to hurt, and the swelling on my ankle and knee hadn’t really been going down. since this afternoon, i’ve had the ice packs on them several times and i’ve had my feet elevated, and it seemed to have helped the swelling in my knee a fair bit. my ankle is still pretty swollen. most of the front of my lower leg still feels numb to the touch, although around the knee is pretty sensitive. i did try putting some weight on my leg today, and i was able to get around that way, although i still feel more comfortable using the crutches for some support. i re-dressed the wound this afternoon, but tonight i left the wrappings off and am going to try and let it have a chance to dry out and scab.