It has been a very long night. I could not get my Maxtor One Touch drive to work and it has lots of backups on it. Finally with searching and digging I found this post which references this software.

Great software, not for the meek or weak but I got it running. The boot sector was damaged somehow.

Now time for some sleep and relief.

Now if only I could get the broadband phone modem working. That is tomorrow’s challenge.

This is two days of vacation here. The weather today was just about perfect. About 24 degrees C maximum and not a cloud in the sky with a little breeze to keep it comfortable. Here is an almost 360 degree panorama.

Click here for a larger version of the panorama. The blending is not great between the frames, but I don’t have the time now to fix it manually or with some additional software. Maybe later I’ll update it but no promises.
We went to the beach in the city and had avery nice picnic with friends here. The kids played in the sandy beach and also in the water and got very wet. So we had some spare blankets in the trunk to keep the seat reasonably clean and dry. Apparently on these two days you can go up Liberation Tower but we neither had the energy or the clean and dry kids to check it out.

Stay tuned for photos.

For now an interesting story.

Background

On these two days, National Day and Independence Day, celebration is done. People drive slowly up and down Gulf Road hanging out of their cars waving flags and people on the side have spray cans of white snow. We got lightly sprayed. The trick is to say in the center lane so you don’t get sprayed so much. Police cars were at every intersection even on both corners.

So while stopped at the red light, diagonally across some kids were thickly spraying a car and it had the wipers on full to clear a thick film on the windshield.

Then a four wheel drive stopped at the light and got sprayed. Then the driver jumped out to chastise the kids and waves down a police car driving by. The police car stops and the sprayed driver gives him a hand shake then walks with him over to the kids and shortly later the driver gets back in his vehicle and drives off, with the police car that was near us following. What do you think they said? I think the cop probably told the guy to relax and not be so uptight and I think the other police car followed him to see that he didn’t get road rage if sprayed again.

I sure wish I had the video camera out for this!

Finally, the weather was great, and the water was smooth. So we went for our first two dry suit dives.

The first dive was as usual after a while between dives not as smooth as could be in general, the drysuit adds another level of complexity to buoyancy. And I find the first dive with completely new stuff kind of not easy and comfortable. I sucked air at an amazing rate, practically double but should be no leaks in the regulators.

The water temperature was 16 degrees C. That doesn’t seem cold, but in a wetsuit would be too cold, in the drysuit, cosy!

The visibility was pretty good. And the second dive went well, I didn’t such air so much, though still a bit more than I’d like.

Note the profile at the beginning. I went down and came back up as my buddy’s ear was not equalizing. So, we thought we had to call the dive. But then his ear was OK, so we went down and then my right ear was too tight and I was close to calling the dive off. You can see in the profile at around 6 meters a couple of pauses. But then it was OK so we went on and all was well. Interesting in that my left ear was tight from the vestiges of a cold so in the morning I took some Otrivin but only in the left side. Should have done both sides.

Stay tuned for some topside video of the dive. I’m looking for the digital video cable for the camcorder to upload it!

bookofjoe: Brain Spa Head Massager\

So much hard work here I need a massage …

Do they do this in Canada?

bookofjoe: BehindTheMedspeak: Episode 3 — ‘What does carbon monoxide in beef do to you — if you eat it?’

They never had this when I went to school. Well I wouldn’t have been any good anyhow.

bookofjoe: ‘Dance for the Athlete’ — By far, the most popular class at Glen Burnie High School

This is pretty good too!

There once was a user that whined,
his existing OS was so blind,
he’d do better to pirate
an OS that ran great
but found his hardware declined.

Please don’t steal Mac OS!
Really, that’s way uncool.
(C) Apple Computer, Inc.”

CNN.com - Apple’s ode to hackers - Feb 17, 2006

Who would have guessed?

CNN.com - Tiger poo, the new black gold - Feb 17, 2006

Click here.

Read this.

Courtesy of Random Acts Of Reality.

That’s all for today. Good night.

Picture courtesy of CNN Best Of Westminster Dog Show