Monthly Archive for January, 2009

Windows 7 – Day 1

Published on January 29, 2009 .1 Comment

Due to some events, I needed to install the Windows OS for some work. This has been the first time I’d installed windows in a while (I did try once a couple of weeks back but went back to linux less than a day later).

My network didn’t work, and I shut the machine down, considering going back to my old OS later on.

I’ve run into horrible problems the first morning of using it. I’m writing this from a very neutral standpoint, and I sortof remember how to use windows. I’m going to type this in as I solve my problems.

I tried installing a couple of programs but now the entire machine has slowed to a crawl. Firefox isn’t starting up, heck! even windows explorer isn’t starting up. I installed a DVD mounting software which probably is doing the damage. There isn’t any processor or RAM usage, just nothing is starting up, which is incredibly annoying. I installed the norton antivirus which doesen’t seem to be starting up either.

Live writer and the command prompt works like a charm though. I’m going to have to brute-force uninstall the programs but I don’t know the commands for deleting folders in the windows command prompt. Also, I keep typing in ls.

C:\Program Files>del MagicDisc
C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\*, Are you sure (Y/N)? Y
C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\INSTALL.LOG
Access is denied.
C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\MagicDisc.exe
Access is denied.
C:\Program Files\MagicDisc\mcdbus.cat
Access is denied.
… snip

Now what’s the windows equivalent to sudo?

Turns out I gotta launch with “Administrative Priveleges”, but since my start menu stopped working, I need to create a shortcut for command and run that using the right click menu. Sheesh, what a workaround.

Golly, desktop stopped working. All I have is a live writer window open, and a non-responsive task manager.

/reaches for restart button

Hmmm, machine isn’t restarting. Which is a good thing, because I forgot to post.

Online downtime, offline uptime

Published on January 27, 2009 .0 Comments

I’ve not written anything for a long time, mostly because I was out doing a lot of pretty neat things.

Over the past three weeks or so, I’ve:

  • Saw Pune, and visited a friend’s sister’s marriage.
  • Played with the band at our most important gig yet: A very prestigious open battle-of-the-bands called “Wildfire” at IIT Kharagpur’s spring festival. After weeks of practice and some great chemistry, we played some great staple heavy metal numbers like “A tout le monde”, “N.I.B”, “For whom the bell tolls”, and we did so pretty well. The judges (”Cassini’s division” from kolkata) seemed to be more into alternative and nu-metal which didn’t bode well for us.
  • Had a lot of fun with some awesome people all around and generally living the college life.

I’ve been seeing lesser and lesser incentive to write to this weblog. I’ve been appreciating the importance of a one-to-one interaction with people, while this is largely a one-to-many means of communication, which comes back to the original question to why we write non-informative personal content in the first place.

I’ve been reading up a lot about sociology and social psychology which I’m beginning to find extremely interesting. I need to learn to make a good impression with people who I meet which I believe will be a really useful skill in life.

My new year resolutions are high defenition.

Published on January 2, 2009 .3 Comments

What I want to be able to do by the end of the month is:

  1. Sleep everyday at 12:30 am or 1 and wake up by 6:30 or 7. This would be so awesome.
  2. Take good notes in class.
  3. Note down expenditures effectively.
  4. Write a private journal.
  5. Remember things.

What I want to have by the end of the year is:

  1. A solid decision of what to do after college.
  2. Be able to remember simple things and stay on top of things.
  3. Meet people and polish conversation skills.
  4. 12-15% bodyfat
  5. Have a solid 30 minute attention span.

Hmm, it's 2009

Published on January 1, 2009 .0 Comments

I was just getting used to 2008.