Less brutally hot today. Actually about the same temperature, but lower humidity.
I boned my computer. I tried to get it back from Server to normal OS X by upgrading. No dice. The client disk that I’ve got doesn’t like that at all. So I went ahead and made a backup to a firewire disk, and then repartitioned the laptop and tried to install. The client disk then informed me that I needed to have OS X in some form or another installed on the machine, or it wasn’t going to install. It was happy to do a full install, mind you, but only on a machine with some partition already containing OS X.
So I set redmeds laptop to firewire “Target Mode,” attached it, and was able to proceed. Nyah nyah.
So then I get to the part where OS X tries to “discover” user account info on an attached disk. I plugged my backup in, and it found my stuff … well sort of. About 20 minutes in, it barfed. Hard. Had to reboot. Okay, so start the process over, except this time go all the way through to a stable reboot before trying to “discover” user data. Found it again, and managed to copy most of my stuff over, but then barfed again.
So at this point I reboot and run all the software updates. Wheee. Machine keeps barfing as I do this. Then I run a disk check on my backup firewire disk. No good. The “B tree” is “corrupted.” I read that as “You’re boned”. So, now I’m all like “but, my collection of all my pictures! My emails! My crap! I want my crap back!” Disk utility can’t do anything about corrupted b-trees. Apple support suggests hitting the “repair” button over and over in case something changes.
I go ask the internet, and the internet says (as with one mighty voice) “Buy DiskWarrior”. So I plunk down $80 and get a program. That program has been running since about 9:30 this morning. It’s occupying 80 – 90% of the CPU (full time), and slowly increasing a number of errors it’s tested / corrected or something. That number is currently 167,086. I have no idea how long it plans to do this, or whether it will work at the end.
If it fails, my next move is to not “discover” my crap, but copy it over wholesale…in the hopes that I can dance around whatever corruption is going on.
Other than that, it was a low energy day. Did some support, debugged some code. Finished the new Harry Potter book. It’s pretty heavy stuff. Left me feeling sad. I didn’t need to read a book that would make me feel sad today.
I saw a dead baby bird and a snake out by the garage. The snake had a green top and a yellow belly, and he was about three feet long. He had a red tongue.
My parents had their stuff moved today. I should call them. That’s a rougher day than me. Same house for 20 years, and now they’re moving.
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