Category Archives: Hero of the Day

Jog

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I read Body for Life a while back, and kept thinking, “I should take that up… Next week.”

This morning I finally cracked and went for a jog. I almost didn’t, but at the last minute I decided to give it a try. I promised myself I wouldn’t go far, and that I could always switch to walking if I wanted.

I made it about 200 feet great. I thought, “Wow, this isn’t so bad.” But then for the remaining quarter-mile or so, I was panting the whole time. Finally the sidewalk ended, and I took that as a perfect excuse to walk the rest of the way back to my dorm.

It’s a pathetic beginning, but, well, at least I began.

OSWD

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Many moons ago, I loved the site OSWD. Basically, people submitted really nice web designs, and they were free. The site had some issues, and forked a few years ago, into OSWD.org and OpenWebDesign.org. I came to prefer OpenWebDesign.org. These days, neither is updated that often. OpenWebDesign has a forum on their main page, and it’s usually full of spam links.

So I bit, and posted on the forum asking if they’d allow someone like me to volunteer to help a bit, even if it’s just moderating comments. It was rapidly going to down the road OSWD went, I told them, and I didn’t want that.

I just remembered, so I went, excitedly, to see what response I got. Had I spurred others into action, causing lots of people to say, “This site sucks right now. Let us help!” Did the site admin apologize and take us up on our offers, or at least pledge to do better?

Nope. One guy, whose username is an obscenity, posted saying that the only people left are those there to ‘[expletive] things up’ because they have some issues with the site administration. And that was all.

But he mentioned another site: OpenDesigns.org. And it’s just become the place I go when I want to find some good design. It’s a nice, clean site. It’s not overrun by spam links to porn sites. It’s supposed to be community-driven. Check it out!

Douchebag

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Last night around 1:30, I was almost asleep when someone in a neighboring building began banging on drums and screaming very loudly. After about 15 minutes, I was getting really annoyed.

A few minutes later, it stopped abruptly. It would appear that someone who was almost asleep when they began playing the drums at 1:30 in the morning called the police. I of course won’t know the details until I’m at the station on Monday to do police logs, but it was probably anonymously reported at 1:45 a.m. by a disgruntled student in a neighboring building. And whoever that anonymous student might be, I salute you: Hero of the Day!

UBCD: It’s Magic

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I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: the Ultimate Boot CD (UBCD) is worth its weight in gold. (Err, I guess that’s not a grand compliment given the weight of a CD. Let’s instead say that, had I paid $200 for it, I don’t think I’d regret it.)

Least year I accidentally hosed the bootloader on my laptop. All my data was, in theory, intact, but all I got when turning my computer on was “OS not found,” which is very scary on a live system with important data on it. I tried all sorts of complex stuff, before I remembered that I had the UBCD. I booted it up, selected “Partition Tools,” and found a program that automagically restored my bootloader.

Monday night, one of my professors explained that he was just given a used laptop, and that it was all well and good except that he didn’t know the password. (And it was a WinXP machine where you need one.) I volunteered to help because he’s a really nice guy and, well, it can never hurt to be on a professor’s good side.

It took me about two minutes, and most of that was waiting for things to load. It includes a utility that let me just blank the password in the registry. It was kind of unceremonious, but I rebooted, ejected the CD, and then got the windows login screen. I just hit enter, logging in with no password, and it worked!

Of course then I spent an hour uninstalling old junk and downloading updates. As I sat there, he asked if I’d come help out a friend at his office–who would pay me–who was having similar problems. I agreed, and he called them, telling them that the FBI might be looking for me, but as long as I wasn’t caught beforehand, we’d be coming by another day to help him.

It’s got all of those utilities that come in handy when you’re absolutely desperate. I think I could make serious money on the side helping people with problems like this. And best of all, it just works. Oh, and it’s free.