The 2013 Archives

Just look at all of the great stuff that I wrote in 2013

(or move onto the literary gold from 2014 or the gems from 2012)

 

Restore failed - Error code=3

(The system cannot find the path specified.)

Roughly once per week, my mother manages to completely destroy her OS partition on her out-of-warranty Acer z5600 All-In-One machine. Usually I simply boot into it with a real operating system loaded onto a USB key, I move the data over to the D drive, and then run a restore of C from the system partition.

But last week, apparently not content with the status quo, my mom managed to corrupt the system restore partition as well. This meant making the $25 purchase of Acer Recovery Disks, glacially shipped by Fedex (but that's another story) to a mail drop in Michigan because apparently, Acer Canada won't ship recovery disks to Canada.

As per the instruction sheet that came with the disks, I first popped in the System Disc and hit F12 to boot from CD-ROM. Over the next little while, I was instructed to load each of 3 Recovery Discs and watched as a dialog showed what looked to be like hundreds of little image files move over to c:\images_tmp_dir.

Then after a half-hour of Recovery CDs loading, this was the helpful message I received:

Restore failed - Error code=3 (The system cannot find the path specified.)

That's it. So I restarted the process. 30 minutes later...same message. I thought maybe it was because the D drive was full of data, so I made space on D. Same result. A search of the Internet for this particular error turned up nothing. I repeated this exercise in futility at least two more times over the next week - always the same results (because of course, because I was repeating it, duh.) Finally, I prepared to make the $25 dollar phone "one-time_support" call to Acer Support, but before doing that as a last resort, I booted the box up again with lubuntu on a USB key and:

1. I moved everything from the SYSTEM_RESTORE partition to D.

2. I deleted a remnant folder from C (I think it was 'IMAGES_TMP_DIR') so that C was completely empty.

I don't know which of the above two steps was the one, but after that my restore completed successfully.*

So I hope Google will quickly spider this little tip to save someone else a $25 dollar phone call to Acer Support.

* ...to WTF... French?! Why French?! Ah. Because I received TWO language CDs in the Acer Recovery pack that at first glance looked identical. At the time I chalked it up to a mistake on Acer's part, much like the mistake I made buying this Acer product for my mom...but closer inspection revealed a very small difference in the printed part number: LD.CAF64.W71 vs. LD.CAE64.W71. Dicks.

Need a lawyer in Peterborough, Ontario?

In July 2012, I engaged John E. McGarrity, a lawyer whose office is located at 343 Stewart St. in Peterborough, Ontario, to handle my divorce. He represented me until April 12, 2013.

If you are in the market for a divorce lawyer in Peterborough, Ontario, I recommend my ex-wife's lawyer - James Jordan. James Jordan is located at: 359 Aylmer Street, P.O. Box 958, Peterborough, ON K9J 7A5.

Other Peterborough, Ontario lawyers can be found here: http://www.peterboroughlaw.org/directory.html

Virgin Sucks Now

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Finally, I'm a published author!

My resort review WAS published on TripAdvisor in 2013, but I just went back now and they took it down!

Oh well, the royalties were terrible anyway.

 

If I ever do find it in my Evernote or something, I'll put it up below. :-(

Summer Camp Lunches Redux

Today, Nik's lunchbag contains Toxic Waste. Yesterday's bag was the Instructions to Rob the Bank (which the little devil never followed.) The day before - the BMO cash bag. Prior to that, he took a bag of Rat Poison to camp and I threw that bag away without thinking to take a picture. And on Day 1, I didn't draw a picture on his bag at all.

So that's it for this year. :-(

  

Summer Camp Lunches

The boy is in Summer Camp this week which means I have to make his lunch each day. The only fun part of that task is drawing on the bags...

 

Elle's Acting Debut!

This is sort of a big deal...

 

You'll be able to say, "I knew Ellie when she was just starting out." À la Lindsay Lohan, I will be acting as Elle's manager until our inevitable drug-induced estrangement. And let me get the ball rolling by announcing that I will be selling her autographs for $5 a pop. Even though they're little more than squiggly X's, get 'em while you can!

It was almost a year ago when Elle and I trekked to Windsor to star as "key" extras in "A Desert Between Us & Them - Raiders, Traitors, and Refugees in the war of 1812", a big budget movie about a war set sometime in the 1800s. Scientists acknowledge that little is known about this war except that men in admiral hats stood on doorsteps and tried to intimidate little girls in beige bonnets...

The World Premiere is on Saturday August 24th, at 6:30pm at the Sanderson Centre in Brantford. Those who prefer a more erudite crowd (read: more than 30 teeth in all of the combined mouths in the room) may wish to wait until Tuesday October 1st at 6:30PM at the Kiwanis Theatre in Chatham to see the show. There will be a Q & A with the filmmakers and some featured historians after the screening - all of which is totally unimportant.

What IS important, is that Elle herself (extra #417) may herself be there sharing the secrets of how she kept the back of her head perfectly still during the filming process and learned how not to stare at the camera on only the fifth take!

And TVO will be broadcasting the feature length version of "A Desert Between Us & Them" on October 5th at 9:00pm. Don't miss it!

How one Conservative became an NDP-er.

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