05-IV-2010.
Go is here. Showing her the little garden in front of the house. Whole family in one place, except Ricardo who just couldn't leave his work at m$. Planning some special food while she is here - sarma for tuesday and wednesday, beans with ham for next two days. Barbecue too, one of these days.
Ugly chemtrails criscrossed the sky around lunch.
Still fighting the total reinstall of everything under ex pee es pee 1... may Bill Gates believe in some sort of hell, where I'll be waiting as the stoker at his kettle.
The machine used to be called Dragon heretofore, but now it's zmajček2, to honor the first machine which used to be in this box. I recorded the whole process, using the little sansa music player as a dictaphone. It lasted from 10:07 to 17:08, the last 21 second recording being me bitching (in english) about Frontpage, which wasn't installed at all, but still its directory and a few files from few windowses ago can't be removed.
I spoke only the first one in serbian, did the rest in english, but then when writing this down I wrote it in serbian first, so this is translated back. In many cases when I was reading the screen, this translation is off, as I can't reconstruct the m$-speak, it never sat well in my head.
10:07 let's see what it forgot... command window won't scroll... it forgot what to launch at startup... it consumes only three hunded megs, didn't put my keyboard layout...
10:35 when I set my layouts [and I have five - serbian latin, american, hungarian, serbian cyrillic, russian], I made a mistake in one of them, and it didn't skip thatt one - skipped them all. So back to step one.
10:36 „attempt to install failed“
10:38 did everything except american, it passed, I change one of them, they all vanish.
10:39 reboot. good luck.
10:45 now it knows what it is, it loaded a heap of crap, sound driver, tablet drive, okay, it launched TotalCmd and beebeeLean is now my shell, okay, but it knows not where my documents are. That's under the current user, which is not what I wanted, got to set it somewhere
10:47 the colors in beebeeLean are okay, but everything else - the ikonostas** color etc, it's all fugly, like default windowses scheme, which is awful. I have some themes saved, from 2006 and 2008, but only the 2006 works and that one is all expee defaults.
10:47 but it again forgot keyboard layouts, so I had to set them again. Let's see if that survives another reboot.
11:18 and after one more reboot, my colors from ikonostas are all gone... the horrors, all gray!
11:19 and it loaded my lilac scheme, but when it showed up, that's not lilac... it's blue. Ish.
11:20 and the buttons style... I set it to windowses classic, gone. Because „failed to read file“. Why? No details. And it doesn't find any color schemes.
11:32 and of course it forgot that my burners are V: and W:, put them on D: and E: again.
11:35 installing m$ office, and it of course wants to call crl.microsoft.com, just like I let it call when I was uninstalling, so it wouldn't complain when I install again. Fucket, I paid and I still to tell them what I'm doing with what I paid. Fuckya.
11:41 now it asks whether I really want to uninstall en eye [or whatever, can't hear it right], and again it calls home to snitch. Alright, make your call, aha now it agrees to uninstall. And what, didn't end with success? Don't tell me.
11:45 just had enough. Under the assumption that the disk will be bootable... well, okay, reinstall from scratch once more. And if nothing else works, back to see drive.
11:52 it accepted the pee disk as dee. So I guess I'll finally have a windowses on a non-see disk again. Let's see what fun that will be.
12:23 okay, it says 20 oor 30%, but we know how m$ calculates remaining time. The cute thing about this board, some Gigabyte one, is that on F12, at POST, it offers a choice of boot device, so I didn't have to change the default order, just set it to boot off a seedee drive once, hey look only five minutes left, kudos all the way
12:25 look it's booting already, what happened with the five minutes? it's looking for hardware... now it offers to boot into the old one, which I may do later, to export some things from registry, let's take the new one now
12:26 to adjust the resolution to something better than the current 640... „take some time adjusting everything for you“... with an animated question mark.
13:07 it's installing the chipset driver from gigabyte's site... now let's see which letters my burners are... the old see is still see, old pee is now dee, en is ee, my old ee which should be an eff, is now aitch, the cue is is now eye, em is a jay, oh is kay, and now it boots because it's drivers that were installed
13:10 realtec's sound manager... is somehow installed already, it's only once in the tray, at least it's not installed twice; the gigabyte board is still being installed, now the network... wait it worked already... or didn't... whichever... look it asks to reboot again. I didn't count the reboots, but then I'll go through these recordings someday.
13:15 and the moron just forgot how how my speakers are plugged in..., ahem at least the box is on the desk so I see the cables and know what I'm doing
13:22 there's an automatic updates popup in the tray now, which I don't want, fuck off m$, that'll be gone immediately. Now nine minutes... ten minutes... eight minutes, ten minutes... 9... 10.. 11... 10... 11... 10... 9... 8... [the whole countdown lasts less than a minute on the recording]... the time does fly... nine... sometimes it flies backwards... 10... 9... 10... 11... 9... 10... 11... 12. Did I hear 13? Going once, going twice... 9. This is always fun. After so many years, as Joel would say, m$ still hasn't mastered copying of files. How hard can that be? This is not fun anymore. (the whole recording lasts 2:23).
13:28 and now it finally works, my previous Windowses was, so to say, seriously fucked up, and now it works. Now for the rest, there's some 20-30 things I need to install to make this usable for work.
13:33 found where to set My Documents to be elsewhere - on the shortcut on the ikonostas, in its properties dialog(ueue) has a „move“ button... which I moved and now it points where I wanted it.
13;34 now about the video card... because my right monitor is upright. So far it was working on... what you get when you just plug it in and let it activate and work as it does. Which I let go for now. Until now.
13:35 the leedtek video driver, another one which doesn't ask where to install (knows better)... the dialog speaks serbian? Don't tell me. Well almost, it says „sacekajte“ instead of „sačekajte“, so it's not quite there, it's engrbian. Okay, seems to work somehow.
13:36 now let's see the cyrillic... „Winfast će instalisati winfast driver na vaš računar“ (serbian is in cyrillic). Winfast will install winfast driver on your computer. So they are able to translate anything but their own name. What a mishmash***
13:37 now it offers... a bunch of uppercase words... „pre nego što MOŽETE da run PONOVO“ (before you CAN run AGAIN - run was in english, rest in cyrillic, AGAIN was uppercased each time). Whoa.
13:39 hey the windowses didn't ask me where to install. Guess it's still on dee.
13:49 finally both monitors are in full resolution, the right one is up, right, upright. To the next task, what comes now... ah yes, copy all the program files to the new dee drive.
13:50 is it copying or just won't show what it's doing?
13:52 what's all this lined up? emessenn gaming, m$ movie maker (no I won't make m$ movies), m$ frontpage... messenger [yawning]. There's in common files a directory named 1033, which exists in at least five other places, how do I know which one is copied now. Ohdibysee, data sources, binaries... whose binaries, there's so many apps having those... m$ shared... oh, did he? And „40“ what with quotation marks, just like they have in Walmart*.
13:55 copying old over the new, even older, for who knows what's in there, it would all get into place had I installed from scratch, this way I go straight for the version I want. Look, a directory called 00, a 88, 10, 00 again. Yes, it's yes for all... (and I specially hate it when it copies few thousands of files, and after half an hour you understand it will take hours, so you finally leave and let it work, and then within five minutes it stops, asks „this file is marked as... yes or no?“, specially if it moves them, move [across disks] doesn't exist, it's always copy then erase original, so for deletions it's specialy asking, but not right away, it asks when you're gone, in the sixth hour of the process... you come back in the morning and it already finished about 20% of it).
[TotalCmd does this better - it keeps working on other files and only those in question are left to wait for you; and most of the time it scans at least first thousand files, so it asks while you're still here]
14:09 now for few more minutes before I part with the Explorer Of Them Windowses as file manager... [reading the settings somewhat softly, as I change them, out of twenty defaults at least fifteen are wrong]... something about automatic scanning of disks and network disks... thanks, turn that off, takes six forevers and just burdens the machine. To show the content of system directories? YES.! Full path in the address bar? YES! In the caption? Yeah, okay. To not cache filenames? To show hidden files and directories? YES! To hide extensions for known file types? That's the worst. Shouldn't have been invented in the first place. Hide protected system files? Launch other directories in separate windows? No, no way. Remember settings for each directory? I don't care, don't. Return to previously open directories at launch? That would be cute if I cared for it. Add control panel to My Computer? [what, it doesn't have it?] Okay, yes. Show encrypted or compressed directories in different color? Yes, okay [if I memorize the meaning of those colors in the first place]. Show file previews for the currently selected file? No do not, it eats resources and screen space and mostly annoys. Allow „simple file sharing“... yes. Applyyyyyy... what, ten seconds and still not done? [and thirty seconds more, I mumble and click around]
15:06 went through registra and replaced „d:\program files“ with „m:\sopstver“ everywhere, so whatever I install goes to em, which is my work disk, at least hundred gigs free there. Should be enough. We'll see how that goes.
15:07 whatever was set to serbian, still holds, keyboard serbian latin, date time formats are right. It shows 15:10 [the clock in the sansa is obviously three minutes behind]. Erasing Outlook express. Can't do, it's still in use. [Ahem, not me. Anyone else around here using it? IIRC I'm alone on this box]
15:11 copying everything from „d:\program files“ to „m:\sopstver“... TotalCmd says it will take 8 minutes.
15:34 and now for beebeeLean. And reeltek's audio manager is in the tray, again, twice. At least the rest of the shit is back to normal.
15:51 copied m$'s deeelels... and foxtools... fox works again... and anything that's in „m:\sopstver“ too still holds... so far so good
15:54 the gimp... alright... the explorator of the internetses is not your default browser... exactly, the last thing I'd ever need. In the options for the whole internet I already removed emessen as the start page, set it to blank, which he then tread over while copying... some esdee walker is active still... don't need that [could it be some piece I used to convert missing emails I got from Burt?]... and firefox... has opened everything as it previously was. It has lost nothing, to differ from m$ which forgot the same stuff three or more times today.
15:57 thunderbird lost some fonts... and the shortcut doesn't work as it contained a š which is now not kosher under the ex pee, which still isn't unicode... but the cyrillic works nicely in, look at hat, „mozilin fajerfoks“ (in cyrillic). Terminal services (which always sounded like those offered by a funeral home) has neatly opened the old connection files, all's in place, excellent. The vault [client], however, requires dot net, some specific version... windowses media musician... I didn't install that. web dictionary missing a deeelel, looking for it...
16:02 now this is ridiculous, I can't just repointer the shortcut for excel or word, as there's nothing, both the target and start-in, there's only a comment, „create professionally looking documents in m$ office word“... make sure you don't use anyone else's office word.
16:04 those shortcuts are no use, let's try these... eror, excel error maybe... I may just install it from scratch one day. Or get rid of it altogether. To just feel better.
16:36 another reboot, because some property in... fox [recording unclear, I don't understand what I said there]
16:49 sharing was turned off, now I see one of the boxes in the [home] network, the other one not... actually I can browse one as guest, the other one fully... on my own, however, I see nothing. Because... my workgroup is not accessible (!). I didn't give myself a permission, or something. I see the group... and now I see my disk.
16:52 my AVG is gonee. And these Chilkat guys... it used to work with Sen Pol Server [huh? what was that?], requires special reinstall, love you guys
16:58 adding more components, I'll need the IIS, and it doesn't find it because it expects it to be on the em disk and now it's a dee or whatever, um the shit on top of shit... umm okay, my seedee is now the ex drive
16:59 it forgot a disk again. that is, it knows it should be on ex, but forgot the directory... now looking for x:\i386\i386 [the logic of this is beyond me] yeayyy... okay.
17:07 the m$ frontpage [don't fall for a frontpage by other brands, friends!] can't be uninstalled... It wasn't installed in the first place, but some previous istall left the few files which are impossible to erase.
-----
* the warning there says...
„appearing to be under age of "40" will be asked...“
I never found out, not for lack of trying, the difference between 40 and "40". And I still regret not taking a shot of it, and I failed to Gugao it out. But now, as I write this, tried again (by duckduckgo) and found it! Here.
** in orthodox christianity, the wall behind the altar, where the ikons are hung; on a PC that'd be the desktop
*** this was a light dedication to Blaža, who always pronounced „mismatch“ as „mišmeš“
Mentions: 13-III-2010., 14-I-2022., Blagoje Vrbović (Blaža), engrbian, fox, Gorana Sredljević (Go), Gugao, Majkrosoft (m$), Reginald Burton Cape (Burt), Ricardo Manuel Bariero (Ricardo), sarma, TotalCmd, zmajček, in serbian