Monday, November 13, 2006

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Laptop setup for Scott. After upgrading from Win XP Home SP1 to Win XP Pro SP2, I attempted to install Windows updates through Microsoft Update but kept getting 0x8007043C. Stinger found no viruses, nor did Sophos. The suggestions given by the Microsoft Update website did not work, either: I refreshed the page, emptied the cache, restarted IE, and revisted Microsoft Update, but the problem remained. I did the same in Safe Mode with Networking—problem still remains. Scott says he wiped the hard drive only 2 weeks ago, and he doesn't care if I wipe it again, so tomorrow I'll do that and start with XP Pro SP2 from scratch. While restarting the MacBook today I got a warning from FileVault saying it needed to recover disk space so I clicked Continue and it proceeded to "recover disk space" for the next several hours—how long does this take? I found lots of messages on the web saying that FileVault sometimes corrupts data and it is, of course, unrecoverable. Some reports say early versions of FileVault were sometimes problematic in this manner but that it is stable now, but I disagree. I put the computer to sleep, but I have a feeling I'll need to reformat this hard drive and lose what feels like about 4 weeks of work setting it up. At least we haven't put any other valuable data on the laptop. Lunch with Joel at Ten. Listserv updates for Cindy. Installed Firefox 2.0 and KeePass 1.0.6 on many office computers. The UPS for my computer needs a new battery. Dinner at home with Patrick: tomato-based chicken stew. Today has been very rainy. I received a late birthday gift from Steve M—a Dan Savage book on my Amazon wishlist. Thanks, Steve! Chatted with Steve by telephone. Burned a cdrom of photos for Remi. Weight training: modified barbell curl, lateral raise.