Subaqua Sternal Rubs

Just weeks after Barbados Butterfly reported that her content was being stolen and republished without her permission in her post "I do not want green eggs and ham", I come to find out that The same thing has happened to me. An "Aquatic Cabinets" company has syndicated posts (Don't worry folks - the one place on my site where the link includes rel="nofollow") from my Scuba Diving category onto their site. I have no problem with people syndicating my feeds (that's why they are there), but I have established rules as to how the feeds can be used, and those rules need to be followed. The license under which the content on this site is released specifies that it may not be used for commercial purposes. I have reiterated that in the disclaimer for those not able to comprehend the extremely simplistic license. Links to both are on the bottom of every single page, making them pretty hard to miss, if one were to adhere to common courtesy at all. BRI Aquatic Cabinets is obviously using the feed in a commercial manner. They have also syndicated every single post from the largest scuba-related internet message board onto their site. What's the purpose of all this? Fool search engines into thinking that the site is more important than it really is, thus raising the site's rank in the search engine's results (which theoretically brings in more customers to the site –> commercial.)
I have emailed the admin of the site to remove my feed, but so far no response. No worries though, I have blocked the web server the site is hosted on, so theoretically it won't be able to get any more posts, just constant 403: Forbidden errors.

I first must apologize - the computer gods conspired against me to prevent my churning out the usual drivel featured on this site since I have been home. Just before I left Grenada, my motherboard was fried to the point where the unit would not even post to BIOS (yes, I realize that is Greek to most of you). Since my on-site service contract had run out only weeks earlier, I had to ship my unit into the repair center just before Christmas. Surprisingly, I got it back within a week or so. However, when it came back, the Hard Drive failed, and I once again could not boot my computer. This time I was lucky where Dell just sent me a new HDD, and I got to install it myself. I am still working on re-installing everything.
After that whole computer-less period, I went on a family ski vacation where I was forbidden to bring my laptop.

But now you can rejoice, I have my laptop back with working HDD and Internet connection. I am leaving for St. Vincent (the island just to the north of Grenada) on Friday morning (well, I guess 2AM is morning) to continue my medical studies for Terms 5 and 6, and have created a new category to chronicle my experiences on SVG. Tune in for further updates shortly… Sorry don't have time to write more now — in usual fashion, I leave in less than 24 hours for a 4.5 month stay and I haven't started packing (or even finished the laundry) yet…

As finals are coming up as soon as tomorrow, and continuing for the next two weeks, my laptop computer decided now would be a good time to go totally Kaputt. Like as in it won't even start up. Instead, when I hit the power button, it just blinks the caps lock light at me for 5 seconds, and shuts off. The HDD indicator light also comes on, but nothing on the screen indicates that the BIOS is starting up. Not like I had important study materials (and email, etc) on there. I think I have most of it backed up, but still GRR!, since I don't have a computer to restore the backup to.

How does this affect you? In short, don't be expecting frequent updates for a bit until I can get this fixed…

No, not me… My computer. In another trip down memory lane, remember when my computer magically could not find a device from which to boot? And my subsequent email and response from Dell Latin America Tech Support?

Well today, just about a month later, I finally got my new hard drive installed. While I am not impressed with the speed of service (evidently the authorized service tech had the part for weeks, but just figured out how to use voicemail this week), I am impressed with the quality of service. The technician was both nice and technically competent. I am also impressed with Dell's Extended Warranty - providing on-site service in a foreign country (a small Caribbean island, no less), which differs from the country of original purchase. I would have not expected it — I half expected to have to ship my laptop back to the US via express mail (read: very expensive) for service, so that I would be without it for a number of weeks. The extended warranty was definately a wise investment

After getting the hard drive installed, I ran Norton Ghost and backed up my entire system to its previous state with a couple of clicks. No days of long labor of reinstalling all programs, changing settings, cursing because of lost data, etc. I should have done this years ago - it would have saved me a lot of headaches… Oh well, live and learn…

Just when I was about to complain about the slowness of Dell Latin America's response time to my support request, I got this email:

A service has been set to replace hard disk drive on your system. You should expect a call from our Dell Service Provider to make an appointment with you in which they will indicate when the part or component will be replaced, delivered or in depot (where you have to go an pick it up), depending of the service type which the report was created. If the report is a service on site, please have the system on the site which the appointment was set, so that you can receive a better and effective service.

***********************************************
The report# is the XXXXXXXXXX. The report will be attended as a:

Service on site ( X )
Part(s) delivery ( )
Part(s) windows exchange ( )
4 hours service ( )
6 hours service ( )
9hours service ( )

************************************************

Wowee, Dell's warranty covers on-site service in foreign countries? I am impressed - I guess that extended warranty was worth it.

Tomorrow is my first midterm - in Neurosciences to be exact… I feel sorta ready. But talking to others, most feel the same way, since no one knows what to expect. The good thing is that the class is graded based on a T-score (basically a Bell curve), so you just have to perform at or above the class mean to get a decent grade. Wish me luck!

It's too bad I haven't had nutrition yet… Tonight I ate a large plate of pasta with marinara/meat sauce, along with a nice salad. I remember something about athletes eating pasta the night before a big game… Maybe it will work for my brain too. Though I probably should have eaten fish, but the problem with that is I don't like fish. Well, I could have made my famous crab Alfredo over shells. Come to think of it, the crab meat isn't real though - in actuality its some sort of Japanese fish that I've never heard of. I wonder if masquerading as another species makes it better or worse brain food…

Finally, for those of you following my Hard Drive saga, I have purchased an external USB HDD. I have an image (copy) of my entire hard drive on it, plus, I have a program that automatically backs up My Documents, email files, etc., every time that they change so that I will have an up-to-date copy of my most important files should my primary HDD decide to crash. It's something I should have done years, and many crashes, ago, but hey, no one's perfect. And actually it may crash at any time… Yesterday, I got a BSOD that let me know that Windows encountered a "serious error," and was halting everything to protect Windows from itself. (Gotta love MS products..) After rebooting, I got another cheery message that a "serious error" had occurred, but no problems since then. Wish me luck on this front too

This morning I awoke to an odd grating/whirring noise coming from my laptop computer. Upon lifting the screen, I noticed the noise was coming from the hard drive, which was extremely hot. Not matter how many keys I pressed, or how much I moved the mouse, I could not awaken the computer from its slumbering state.

Bad news.

So I tried the usual remedy: rebooting. After failing the usual start-up checks, I got the ominous message:

"Cannot find boot device." This same thing happened to the communal family computer at home just before I left for school. It's FUBAR'ed, so naturally I was a bit apprehensive.

So my solution? Since the hard drive was making odd whirring and other noises, I figured I could "re-align" it by gently smacking it around some. Well, after rebooting again, it mercifully started back up normally. I don't know if it will crash again… Windows XP reports the drive to be "healthy," and Norton could find no viruses…

Does anyone else have a suggestion? Well I am back for now, but if I am not on-line for a while, you will know why…