Doug's Sounding Board

The past weekend was great! Nicole came back from the UK Thursday night and the Friday day we drove to LA for a family reunion on my dad’s side. Nicole held up amazingly well despite the jet lag. Our family met at the Laguna Sawdust Art Festival and wandered before going to the main Laguna […]

The Illusionist – I loved the uncertainty it generated throughout the movie about what was real and what was illusion. Plus you generally can’t go wrong with Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti and I think it’s the first movie Jessica Biel is good. Happy Gilmore – It’s been awhile since I’ve seen it but it’s […]

This morning after I walked the dogs but before I went to work I saw the wasp again. It was trapped between the window and the screen actively looking for a way out and that’s where it’s going to stay for now. When I went home at lunch to let the dogs out it was […]

Yesterday morning I was in the kitchen when I saw something flying with the corner of my eye. I turned to look and saw a black wasp making a course straight for my head. Recalling recent tales of swollen ears from wasp-in-hair action I dodged and ran out of the kitchen. It went back up […]

When Nicole left I figured I would spend a day or two replacing the 7thsign hard drive using Nicole’s computer as the host for the two laptop drives. Her machine was too unstable for that so instead of upgrading her machine to be more efficient and quiet after the drive swap, I had to do […]

During the past few months, when writing, I’ve had an urge to use a semi-colon. I resist and tell myself that it really doesn’t know what it wants and restructure things so that no semi-colon is possible. I don’t know where the urge comes from. I’ve read the rules on when they should be used […]

At least with regards to keeping current on technology. Before my computer died forcing me to upgrade now, I was planning on an upgrade next year which would have been a 7-year life-span. A few months ago I replaced my video card from 1998, which still worked well, so I could have two monitors. My […]

I was out for a week and a half and I feel like a feel red-neck with the old motherboard and power supply sitting out in the front yard, but I’m back! The hard drive getting corrupted wasn’t the problem, just a symptom of a failing motherboard. I pulled off the power connector from the […]

The final Price is Right with Bob Barker – I hadn’t watched the show in years and I mostly watched it as a kid. It was fun seeing this. The excitement of everyone on the show was awesome and a number of cars were won. The value of the final showcase was about $90,000! Pirates […]

Thursday night I was playing chess with Peter when I heard a clunk-clunk from the hard drive. Then my computer was frozen. I copied down the state of the chess board and tried rebooting which the computer informed me was impossible becasuee it was an unmountable drive. I tried booting into the Window recovery console, […]