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Okay, so while I still haven’t been able to get my windows images moved properly to my new drive I have been able to get around the insane way that I can’t re-partition my drives once Windows blesses them. So in my opinion the series is tied one win by Windows one by my tenacity and a little (okay BIG) help from Ubuntu’s install disk

I have to tell you, if you couldn’t tell from the title, I’m quickly losing patience here and am now considering moving my machine over to Ubuntu on the new drives and letting Windows rot where it is. Keeping a dual boot (able to run either when you turn the computer on ) and eventually moving whatever I can to freeware software and/or emulators…

I have called Cygwin into play a lot during this exercise. It’s a great package of Unix/Linux tools that can run within Windows and it has once again re-affirmed my believe in a greater intelligence than Microsofts….

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I’ve really, over my past few years, come to the realization that the difference between Windows and Unix/Linux is really quite simple.

Windows (Microsoft?) assumes that it should have the final say as to how things are run, and of course what can and obviously what can’t be deleted. A Windows knows best kind of thing… Which kind of explains the fiasco of it’s design when it keeps asking you if your really, really, Really want to do something! (I love Apple’s video ad on this – it shows it like it really is…)

Unix on the other hand, does not assume, it knows that the system owner or administrator is the boss and will do exactly as requested (whether you really really meant to or not.) This attitude can certainly lead a new administrator into disaster, but on the other hand, what ever you want to do (intended or not) it will do. I guess that’s why I like Unix so much – it gets the job done, without concerning itself as to whether that is what you may or may not have wanted to really do.

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My main computer is starting to show it’s age – it’s only got 1.5 GB of memory , a 1.5 GHz CPU and 160GB of Disk Space … thankfully it is still running Windows XP … but I’m beginning to wonder for how much longer…

For many I’m sure that this would be enough for quite a while, but I do a lot of things with my beast and it’s starting to creak pretty badly. One of it’s biggest issues is disk space, I’ve been running out of it for a while now and been dumping some of my minor projects in order to keep enough disk space to keep working on the others… Thankfully, about 3 weeks back I got permission from my finance committee (also known as my wife ) to upgrade the Hard Drive to 500 GB. Which would hopefully keep me going for at least another year before I had to upgrade the computer itself…

My original plan was to partition the new drive into two drives . The first partition (250GB ) would replace my D Drive partition within Windows on my old Drive. I was then planning to expand the C drive partition on the original drive to take advantage of the whole 160GB of space. This would have given me approximately 410GB of space for my Windows XP, more than enough room for a year or so AND I would have had another 200 plus GB of disk space for installing my favorite operating system – UNIX or in this case Linux …. That was the plan anyways – and it would have created a fair bit of writing material I’m sure… but fate has had other plans….

So I installed the new drive and set up the partitions, and then moved my D drive to the new partition on the new drive. For this I used the Windows XCOPY command (specifically XCOPY D:\*.* H:\ /C/H/E/K/O/P ). The first problem arose when I then tried to remove the old D drive partition and expand the old C Drive…

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Sorry about that. As you may have noticed – I disappeared for a while there…

It sort of happens with me – I get wrapped up in one or a bunch of other things and time just kind of flows by. I like to say I’m "In the Zone" but my wife refers to it as being "not on this planet"…. Almost the same thing…

It’s not like I haven’t been busy… I just haven’t been keeping everyone up to date about it. I’ve recently tackled updating our "books" and accounts for income tax time and of course getting everything filed as well. We’ve also had a busy time with family of late and had to do a lot of traveling. And thankfully did a bit of traveling for ourselves as well…. all that being said, I’ve also still been battling technical demons (or daemons for you teckie types…)

I’ll probably be popping in and out over the next couple of weeks until things settle down. However tomorrow will start an article that will probably go on for several sections – it’s a doozy of an issue that I have been battling, with all sorts of side excursions to make life interesting…. so hang in there, more is on the way <grin>

Prelude

I was out shopping for some games for my new Wii the other day. Since we really enjoy the “fun” aspect of the gaming console (especially when it comes to playing it with our young grandsons,) I was looking for something that gave us “more of the same.” I had decided the package “Game Party” as it contains a wonderful combination of games ( darts, shuffleboard, etc.)

I live in a fairly large city. So, imagine my surprise when I could not find it in any of the stores here in town! I even checked on-line and found that none of the large box and online suppliers had it available in stock. I then checked out the used game market, hoping that someone may have “tired” of the game and put it out for resale…

Opportunity Missed

Alas, no… There was none to be had. But I stumbled across several “used copies” of another game that intrigued me, “Star Trek Conquest”. They were asking $19 for them… Well I’m a big fan of Science Fiction turn based strategy games AND Star Trek and this seemed to cover the best of both worlds, except I don’t like buying a game without first researching it and so I went home to do that first.

It didn’t take long to find several reviews on the game, all positive and what surprised me even more, was that the game was originally sold for $15! I thought that the $19 was a little high, but close enough for me not to worry about it. So I went back the next day to get it… only to find them all gone… and it was about to get worse – much worse…

Final Costs

I did find one copy locally, hidden in the back of a small Wii section of games for sale at the local video store. They were asking $29 – and I thought it was a mis-pricing by the manager. So I went home to checked online to use some other stores prices to argue the price down…

Imagine my surprise when I found the same price on-line AND higher… This is probably the first time that I have ever seen the cost of a game “increase” due to it becoming (obviously) an unknown game that was now starting to become noticed, and the demand was driving up the price!

I decided to check back at the two stores that “had” the games on for $19 (but were now sold out) and asked if they were expecting or had other copies “in the back”. Unfortunately no – they didn’t, but they would be getting some in within the week… and the cost… $34.99!!! Ouch!

I mentioned to the clerk that I could not believe my luck in missing the lower priced items and that I was amazed to see it almost double in price after it’s first release. He agreed and then added – “yeah, I know what you mean. I bought it when it first came out for $14.99!”

Suffice to say I raced back to the video store and was relieved to see that they still had that lone copy of “Star Trek Conquest” for $29 and bought it on the spot – sigh…

I also eventually got the “Game Party” off of E-bay at a “fair” price (higher though when you add in the cost of shipping but there is still no one locally that carries it.) Of the two games I prefer the Star Trek one – it’s a really good game – however you can’t play against anyone with it and I know the other will be a hit with my grandsons.

Final score on this one?

Robin 0 Worm 1…