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Year View| Summary| Highlights| October 2002 (Month View)

01.10.2002Tuesday 1 October

I woke up sore again, maybe from forgetting to take my paracetamol last night. I got a Dr’s appointment to try to get a medical certificate stating why I was unable to study. The earliest time they had was 4:15 so I took that. Mum drove me into town just in time for the Dr’s and he wrote me a nice letter, which should do the job. Unfortunately, I need a Justice of the Peace to verify that the copies of the documents I’m sending are genuine, and none could be found after 4:30, so it looks like I’ll have to head into town again tomorrow. I did buy a nice chocolate thick shake from the Mad Cow Café, so that should last me a few hours.
Upgraded the video drivers without fixing the problem, I suspect it’s hardware related.

02.10.2002Wednesday 2 October – I catch galloping flu

I woke up. Then I sat down. Some time later Mum drove me to town. There I went to the courthouse where I had copies that purported to be copies of original documents verified that they were true copies of the documents of which they purported to be copies. This being completed, I made my way to the post office, where I purchased a money order for $105 which I posted to Silas along with a “backup” copy of DreamweaverMX (which for copyright reasons I should state was only for archival purposes and in case of nuclear strike or meteor showers and so forth), simultaneously sending QTAC the purported copies via express post. I then went on IRC at the library until I needed a milkshake, which necessitated a trip to the Mad Cow café, who also sold me a lamington. We then drove home again.
Sick
During this period I became sick, probably having caught Ella’s flu. As the afternoon dragged sneezing into evening, my throat became more and more sore and my nose successfully replicated a leaking tap, complete with drip.

03.10.2002Thursday 3 October

I am now officially sick. I have the galloping flu. Shan rode over just as I was waking up, just before lunchtime, and he is as sick as I am.
4pm
Update: 4 PM and still alive.
4:15pm
Update: 4:15 PM and still alive.

04.10.2002Friday 4 October

Sick. Flu. Nose runs, throat hurts, muscles ache.

05.10.2002Saturday 5 October

I am still sick, but a little better, maybe. It’s hard to tell.

06.10.2002Sunday 6 October – Shan’s 18th birthday

I went to bed, at 8 AM. I slept until 1 PM. I then stayed up until 7 AM tomorrow, when I once again went to sleep. However, before that, I drove over to Shan’s for his 18th Birthday. He has the coolest and smallest little SOG powerplier.

07.10.2002Monday 7 October

I finished my paracetamol. I will see how I go on nothing – it’s not as if they’re very strong painkillers anyhow. I did nothing for most of the day. I spent a few hours trying to find a program that would automatically read the EXIF metadata from my photos and use that to generate a photo album. I ended up spending a few hours editing PhotoShop templates to make it do it.

08.10.2002Tuesday 8 October

I woke up sore. I guess the paracetamol does actually work. My shoulder hurts, my side hurts, my back hurts, my legs ache... it’s a wonder I don’t have a headache too. I ran PhotoShop for 2 hours while it made a photo album of 1950 photos, which is available via my PC. I had Becky test it, and it works well apart from my slow connection speed. Shan rode up in the evening and we had a chat about his plans to meet his girlfriend in Cairns next week. Mandi came up later in the evening and talked to Mum for a while.

09.10.2002Wednesday 9 October

I didn’t go to sleep until nearly 3 AM last night, and I didn’t wake up until after 11. Not long after waking, Mum and I drove to town, where she went to the Dr’s and I bought a milkshake and set off to photograph the two TV transmission towers and the Telstra tower. It’s not 3:30 and I’ve spent half the night making pictures and various rather unproductive PC related things, so I better go to bed.

10.10.2002Thursday 10 October

I woke up, yet again. Mum went to town. I didn’t. Mum phoned up in the evening to tell me she’s staying in town. Robyn phoned up tonight to speak to Mum about Mally. My computer did bad things. I converted an HTML file to XHTML compliancy for a friend from IRC, and he was viewing the file from my computer, when IIS decided it wanted to connect out, rather lots. I blocked it with the firewall and it had a hissy fit. It was trying to connect through the firewall around 30 times per second, which didn’t do the CPU utilisation any good. I killed a few wrong processes and had a BSOD, rebooted, ran a virus scan, lost the ability to open hard drives (the drive is not ready), lost most of my window icons, lost the ability to run most programs, scheduled a complete disk scan, re-installed firewall, rebooted, scanned disk and so far it seems to be working like it used to. I wonder what will go wrong next. Any day now, I expect the PC to stop booting altogether; gee, I’m such an optimist.
Moths
There are several squillion small moths trying to fly into my mouth. They wait on my monitor screens and fly into my mouth whenever I open it. It’s so nice to live in a tropical paradise...

11.10.2002Friday 11 October

The day started, and ended, quietly. I drove over to Joneses in the evening and stayed until dark. We took a few photos of their new satellite internet setup. Then I drove back home again. Just too exciting for words.

12.10.2002Saturday 12 October – I register my own domains

I finally got around to “getting my own piece of the net” and registered the-i.org and nedmartin.org for the princely price of $USD7.99 each. By the morning, they were working and pointing to my Bigpond hosting. I spent all night online, going to bed at 9:20 AM.
Thank you Becky, for getting me my domains.

13.10.2002Sunday 13 October – I get my own webhosting

I woke at 1 o’clock, which wasn’t too bad considering as I went to bed at 9 AM. I ordered 250 MB of webhosting from solidinternet.com for $USD 29.95 and am awaiting them to set up the account. I then rested around doing very little, a bit of research in the evening, and a short walk.
Thank you Becky, for paying for my webhosting.

14.10.2002Monday 14 October – Mally is ill

Mum’s eldest sister phoned. She is gravely ill. Mandi, Shan and Ella came over and dropped off a small kitchen grinder on their way to Cairns. I began to update my webpage in anticipation of having a host large enough to host it all. I also walked down to the Home Rule bridges for the first time since I’ve been out of hospital.
Computer
I hope my computer lasts that long. I’m having more errors as I type. Unable to write to drive C, unable to load thread blah, application errors and unexpected quits, overall, not very good at all. I’ve no idea what’s wrong – except that I’m convinced its hardware related and not just software. I’d rather like to be able to play movies again too, without a blue screen error. Sound without little high-pitched digital clicks in it would be nice as well. Now that I get thinking, I wouldn’t mind having CD drives and Hard drives that would stay set to DMA instead of resetting to PIO and requiring no less than three reboots to make them go again, and it would be nice to have my mouse and keyboard detected every time I boot up, rather than having to force abandon booting and retry, plus I’d love to be able to take desktop pictures on my secondary monitor like I used to be able too... the more I think about it, the more I think I need a new PC.

15.10.2002Tuesday 15 October – Hard Drive Errors

The day dawned bright and early. I dawned around lunchtime.
  It was a bad mistake.
  When I started my PC, scandisk checked drive G:, as I had asked it to. It very thoughtfully told me this:
  Checking file system on G:
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x160a28400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x160a28400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Folder \Dloads is entirely unreadable.
  Folder entry removed.
  1011312 KB in 1182 recovered files.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x1e09b2400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x1e09b2400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Folder \My Documents\My Pictures\fauna is entirely unreadable.
  Folder entry removed.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x1a1a08400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x1a1a08400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Folder \root\temp\Brad’s Homepage_files\~dhewetts_files is entirely unreadable.
  Folder entry removed.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x19a394400 for 0x10000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x19a3a0400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x19a3a2400 for 0x2000 bytes.
  Folder \Web\pages has bad clusters.
  Bad clusters removed from folder.
  Convert lost chains to files (Y/N)? Yes
  2344 KB in 262 recovered files.
  Windows is verifying free space...
  Free space verification is complete.
  Windows has made corrections to the file system.
  40 KB in bad sectors.
  Checking file system on C:
  Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.
  Cleaning up 5 unused index entries from index $SDH of file 0x9.
  Cleaning up 5 unused security descriptors.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e0aa000 for 0x10000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e0b6000 for 0x1000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e197000 for 0x10000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e19f000 for 0x1000 bytes. Windows replaced bad clusters in file 8767 of name \PROGRA~1\MICROS~3\Office\Xlators\MSO97V.DLL. Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e383000 for 0x10000 bytes.
  Read failure with status 0xc000009c at offset 0x10e385000 for 0x1000 bytes.
  Windows replaced bad clusters in file 10855 of name \DOCUME~1\ADMINI~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\PFTE9~~1\SVGFIL~1\NPSVGVw.dll.
  Adding 3 bad clusters to the Bad Clusters File. CHKDSK discovered free space marked as allocated in the master file table (MFT) bitmap.
  Correcting errors in the Volume Bitmap.
  12 KB in bad sectors.
  How exciting. The rough translation is: it deleted my last two years of downloaded files, the majority of which are backed-up to CD’s but not all. It probably means either the hard drive is dying, or the disk controller, or me, or the galaxy. It’s a little hard to tell.
A few more juice errors which might bring a smile to your dial:
  Windows cannot unload your registry file. If you have a roaming profile, your settings are not replicated. Contact your administrator.
  Access to performance data was denied to ?????o????????? ???? as attempted from C:\WINNT\system32\mmc.exe
  The timeout waiting for the performance data collection function “PerfDisk” in the “C:\WINNT\system32\perfdisk.dll” Library to finish has expired.
  WMI ADAP was unable to load the perfproc.dll performance library due to an unknown problem within the library: 0x0
  Detection of product ’{90280409-6000-11D3-8CFE-0050048383C9}’, feature ’ProductNonBootFiles’, component ’{EE6C0B94-C3A4-11D3-91C4-00600893B51B}’ failed. The resource ’C:\Program Files\Common Files\ODBC\Data Sources\’ does not exist.
  Windows cannot load the user’s profile but has logged you on with the default profile for the system.
  DETAIL – Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service.
  RegLoadKey failed. Return value Insufficient system resources exist to complete the requested service. for C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Windows\\UsrClass.dat.
  DETAIL – Access is denied. , Build number ((2195)).
  The device, \Device\Ide\IdePort0, did not respond within the timeout period.
  An error was detected on device \Device\CdRom0 during a paging operation.
  The device, \Device\Harddisk0\DR0, has a bad block.
  Application popup: Windows – Fatal Application Exit : Tiny Personal Firewall
  Driver: MsgDigestCalculate: Unable to open file ’C:’: 0x1
  KernelOpenFile: strlen(Filename) < 2 ?!?
  AppendFragmentToLongPath: OpenDirectoryObject error: C0000044, Directory: \??\C:\Program Files\Opera
  The description for Event ID ( 4000 ) in Source ( fwdrv ) cannot be found. The local computer may not have the necessary registry information or message DLL files to display messages from a remote computer. The following information is part of the event: \Device\FWDRV, MsgDigestCalculate: Unable to open file ’C:’: 0x1.
  KernelOpenFile: strlen(Filename) < 2 ?!?.
  AppendFragmentToLongPath: OpenDirectoryObject erro.
  RSM cannot manage library PhysicalDrive2. It encountered an unspecified error. This can be caused by a number of problems including, but not limited to, database corruption, failure communicating with the library, or insufficient system resources.
  The ring buffer that stores incoming mouse data has overflowed (buffer size is configurable via the registry).
  The driver has detected a device with old or out-of-date firmware. The device will not be used.
  The keyboard device does not exist or was not detected.
  Could not set the keyboard indicator lights.
  Could not set the keyboard typematic rate and delay.
  The device sent an incorrect response(s) following a keyboard reset.
  The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Ide\IdePort0.
I’m not sure what, but something gave me the impression that somewhat was wrong with my PC, I think it was when it deleted my entire Dloads folder, which I was rather fond of. So I’ve been trying to burn my photos and other vital data to CD’s (as it is currently only backed up to another drive but with errors like this, who knows what the problem is?). Unfortunately, I only have four blank CD’s and my computer politely froze just before writing the table of contents to the second CD, which effectively turned it into a fancy coaster. It also annoyed me ever so slightly, and seeing how it is now going on 4:30 AM, I am going to bed – and the data can prepare to meet its maker.
Oh, just in case you thought everything was going too smoothly – I did have something that went wrong today. The web hosting, which I ordered and paid for on Sunday, still hadn’t arrived (so to speak) so I emailed them and got the reply that my account had been approved but they had now resent my activation email, but needless to say, I’ve still not received it.
Maybe I should’ve been a truck driver.

16.10.2002Wednesday 16 October

I went over to Joneses to pick up some more blank CD’s, after wrecking another one trying to back-up my photos.

17.10.2002Thursday 17 October

Mum went to town, and I stayed here, relaxing and taking it easy.

18.10.2002Friday 18 October

I managed to burn another back-up CD, and had some more PC problems. I spent some time updating my webpage, and then went over to Joneses for the evening.

19.10.2002Saturday 19 October – Mally passed on

Ken phoned Mum in the morning to let her know Mally had passed on.
I drove over to Joneses in the evening, and stayed the night. Shan had a long phone call to his girlfriend, after which we ended up staying awake until after 4 AM.

20.10.2002Sunday 20 October

Shan and I didn’t wake until 9 AM, which wasn’t too bad considering we didn’t go to sleep until after 4 AM. We went for a walk up to 1K to see if we could see the tree wallaby anywhere, but it seemed to have gone. I drove home after lunch, and had a few hours sleep in the evening.

21.10.2002Monday 21 October

I didn’t go to sleep, instead staying up all night. I then had a quiet day, having a few hours sleep in the evening. I stayed up until 4 AM fixing and updating my webpage, being woken again at 8 AM by my sister phoning.

22.10.2002Tuesday 22 October

Today is hot, a true summer day. After being woken at eight, I’ve been trying to pretend I’m awake ever since. I phoned Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE) a few times, but they’re all busy.

23.10.2002Wednesday 23 October

The day dawned bright and early, around about dawn. I woke up somewhat later, and it was already getting hot. I phoned Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE) again, only to find the woman I needed to talk to was busy, and after phoning a second time, the receptionist told me she has now flown out until Monday. Mum arrived back from town where she had stayed the night at Sarah’s, around lunchtime. I did nothing constructive all day, messing around waiting for it to get cooler. Once the sun’s heat had subsided somewhat, I went for a walk to the shop and bought an ice cream, wandering down to the creek after. I could hear a pump running, so I went and found it – surprised to find it was an old-fashioned cast-iron piston pump, and quite a large one at that. The machinery made back in those days sure was strong – and heavy too. I messed around attempting to create a JavaScript that would pop-up a new window with an image in it – surely an easy thing to do if I knew what I was doing, but it just got messed up and I’ve no idea what’s wrong with it now – it freezes Internet Explorer. I had a reasonably early night for a change.

24.10.2002Thursday 24 October

It was another hot day. I sweated. Once it was cooler, I drove over to Shan’s, and ended up fighting Star Office under Linux on Elsie’s laptop... not what I had really planned on doing. No matter what we did, it wouldn’t print what we wanted – and the spreadsheet was protected, none of us knowing the password. Shan and I then wheelbarrowed the rubbish to the tip and burnt it – very un-environmentally friendly I’m sure, but it saves the cows from choking to death on the plastic. Besides, one volcano can release fifty years pollution, so why me worry? Have to love the caring attitude. I am going to try having a slightly early night for a change, and maybe go to town tomorrow.

25.10.2002Friday 25 October

Shan dropped in on his way back from an exam up at the school. Mum and I drove into town in the evening, where the most exciting thing I did was buy a thick-shake, and wow, what a thick-shake it was.

26.10.2002Saturday 26 October

It almost looked as though it could rain today, but it didn’t. I went down to the local markets in the morning, buying a piece of vegetarian pizza. I then rested (about all one can do in this heat) until it cooled down a bit. The local folk festival had a music night at the markets, so I went down to that for a short while – drugged out hippies aren’t really my scene.

27.10.2002Sunday 27 October

Yet another very hot and dry day. The dust is not nice at all – we need rain, and now. It actually clouded up a small bit and may be building up to some rain, I hope so. The creek up the back of Dad’s, from which he and a few others gravity feed water from, has dried up. The local school’s water supply (also a creek up the back) has also dried up. Old Ned’s well (which hasn’t dried up in 22 years or so...) has dried up, so it must be dry!

28.10.2002Monday 28 October – I order my new computer

I was up and phoning Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE) before 9:30, and amazingly got through and they rang back shortly after, so I finally managed to talk and arrange what I was supposed to have done weeks ago. I also sent off the order for my new PC:
  Socket-A GigaByte GA-7VAXP $262.00
  AMD ATHLON/PALOMINO XP2000 (1.67ghz) Socket A $219.00
  DDR-DIMM 256meg NANYA or EQUIVALENT DDR266 (PC2100) $119.00
  PC133 S-DIMM 256meg MEMTEK or EQUIVALENT $59.00
  DVD-CD-ROM IDE 16x DVD PIONEER Slot Load Model 106s OEM $95.00
  IBM 80 gig 7200rpm GLASS platter ATA-100 120GXP VANCOUVER $208.00
  GeForce4 MX440 GALAXY 64meg 4ns DDR Ram Active cooling TV OUT Gold PCB $129.00
  Midi-Tower Millennium Tower MIX21K 350watt P4 and AMD Power Supply 4 Bays BLACK $85.00
  Network Card GENIUS PCI 10/100 Model GFR100-TXR $23.00
  Network Cable 10meter RJ45 CROSS-OVER $15.00
  FANS 8cm SUNON Sleeve 3wire $9.00
  Total: $1,223.00
  The DVD and PC133 RAM are for Shan, the DVD is his (late) birthday present.

29.10.2002Tuesday 29 October – The day the UFO came

Today was an interesting day. Mum and I went to town in the evening. I photocopied my doctor’s letter and had it verified as a copy of the original of which it purported to be a copy etcetera, and then posted it with its cover letter to Brisbane School of Distance Education (BSDE).
Not long after dark had fallen (and halfway through doing something on my computer) the power rudely failed, leaving me in thick darkness. Mum and I sat outside, near the garden, talking. I was watching the stars, and Mum was staring blankly at the ground. I noticed a satellite passing overhead, so was watching it intently. It passed into a cloud, becoming abruptly brighter, whereupon I said to Mum “look at that star, its getting brighter”. It then appeared to shine a light directly at me, the brightness of which was impossible to say as I was staring directly at it. Moments later it passed out of the cloud and back into the sky, and then behind some trees, continuing on its satellite way. Mum was asking me what had happened as she had seen the flash of light, bright enough to reflect off the trees and the ground, but hadn’t looked up and seen the “star”, and me asking her what she meant.
  I assumed it was an airplane, which had passed into a cloud and its lights had reflected downwards, so I waited for its engine noise. It was mildly windy, with very light clouds passing rapidly, and many stars visible. The night was mainly clear, no other light around, except for the dim fading light of the setting sun still just visible on the horizon. The engine noise never came, and it occurred to me that there had been no flashing light either, as is usually visible on a commercial aircraft, and also that the cloud which the “satellite” had passed into probably wasn’t there, I assumed there was a cloud due to the way in which the light suddenly got brighter. I still haven’t been able to think of any logical explanation. The light was bright enough to reflect off the trees and flash around, which is bright. Where we live, trees surround us and they are tall, blocking a lot of the sky and hemming us in. Any light would need to be considerably powerful to penetrate and reflect the way this did, and the way Mum saw it. I seriously doubt any normal aircraft could have caused a light that bright, and that focused, and for such a short time, without having been very low – in which case it would surely have made some noise and also its flashing tail lights would have been visible.
  I’m still not sure what it was, but I am almost considering making a fool of myself and phoning the power company to ask what was the official reason for the power to fail, which failed again a few hours later, at which point I went to bed a little scared.
  As far as I know nothing abducted me during my sleep – but how would I know?
Comment by Ned – Sunday 6 July 2003, 10:06 PM
  The official sceptic’s story: Satellites roll and catch the sun, especially if they’re near the horizon (which this wasn’t). I can’t imagine a flash of reflected sunlight from a satellite being as bright as this, but who knows?
Comment by io – Wednesday 10 September 2003, 7:56 AM
  You should have phoned the power company. If it wasn't isolated, they would probably already have a pre recorded message telling you that areas "x" having a power outage. If not, then meh.. Power companies should provide a reliable supply and if they don't, you have the right to know. A flash or reflected sunlight can be very bright.. The possibility exists that it may have been an Iridium flare [which are known to be quite bright]. What was the size of the UFO?

30.10.2002Wednesday 30 October

I woke up without any easily discernible signs of abduction, and feeling quite normal. I spent most of the day researching, with Mum driving into town for a Dr’s appointment and staying most of the day in there. I phoned Matthew in the evening to give him a price on his computer, which he’d asked for, and then continued with my research.

31.10.2002Thursday 31 October

Today was another hot and dry day, not quite as bad as the last few days, but summer is definitely on its way. I have nothing at all to write about today, I spent nearly all day at my PC. I phoned up GameDude Computers to see why my order was taking so long, and an hour later, I received an email with my order confirmation and amount to pay, but they had left out Shan’s PC133 RAM as it wouldn’t work with my motherboard, so Shan phoned them up again and got that corrected. The Athlon XP2000 processor that I had planned to purchase was out of stock, so replaced with an Athlon XP2100, which cost more, of course. I sent of the money, all $1312 of it, and now just have to wait for the product to arrive, and hope it’s in good condition and what I am expecting. I went for a short walk in the evening, just down to the markets and back, had a shower, chatted for a while on IRC and read a few web pages, and now off to bed.

Year View| Summary| Highlights| October 2002 (Month View)

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