Jumping on the Bed!

I really hope this is the last of the depressing news around here.

When I came home last week and went looking for some of my old files on my NAS (Network-Attached Storage), the mounted drive was unresponsive. “Enh”, I thought at the time. “it just needs to be rebooted again.” Unplugged the power to the Western Digital MyBook World Edition and plugged it back in. Instead of the happy blue rings of the system powering back on, I got nothing. Power-cycled it again and still no lights but a faint “click click click” sound was coming from it. My already battered heart took another hit and I went numb.

Damned the warranty, I dismantled the white acrylic cage imprisoning my data and the past four days has been spent trying to recover from the crash. I had intended for it to be a backup unit, but as I’ve been moving between a couple of different computers and six or seven operating system changes, it’s pretty much just been storage and not duplicated files. I seriously considered sending the drive out for data recovery knowing that it would likely cost me around $1,000. Thankfully I was able to get 70% of the crucial files back before the drive (pictured above) finally gave up the ghost and was throwing read errors left and right.

The MyBook World Edition uses some sort of linux operating system so the drive was partitioned and formatted as ext2. I’ve been using ext2ifs to read and write to my dual-booting Ubuntu drives for a few years now and it’s worked admirably. This time, however, it would only read the partition as part of a RAID set and wouldn’t open it normally. After a little digging, I uncovered another actually older utility called Explore2fs which is strictly an ext2 partition reader, as opposed to ext2ifs’s ability to mount the ext2 partition as a normal readable / writable drive within the Windows environment.

Explore2fs wouldn’t run properly at first but after setting it to run under Windows XP compatibility mode with administrative rights, it worked like a charm. It found the four partitions on the MyBook drive and let me browse the file system and export the folders I needed to my desktop. I did end up losing most of my music, but as I’ve been paring down my physical CD collection to those artists or albums I really enjoy listening to, I may not miss most of what’s gone. I was, however, missing over half of the 8,771 pictures I’ve taken with my camera over the last 6 and a half years. So I’ve been scouring the 34 hard drives I’ve been holding onto, in some cases for the past 13 years, for any and all files I want to keep.

The road is long and arduous, but while disposing of the cruft, and triaging the survivors, I’ve been reminded of many fond memories and I’m gaining a better sense of myself; learning about he boy I used to be, the person I am now, and the man I want to become. Amazing what nearly 3.2 Terabytes of data spanning the beginning of your adult life can teach you.

(“sleep” imogen heap – i megaphone)

Due to numerous stresses in my life, I haven’t gotten more than two to three hours of sleep at a time for the last two and a half months, and with that some other unfortunate complications. I finally went to my physician to see what’s wrong with me and he gave me some samples of Lunesta. “The one with the butterfly in the commercials” he says to the guy who hasn’t had cable television for over five years. I’ve taken them nightly for the past five days and while it takes about forty-five minutes to start feeling the effects, I still wake up every two to three hours.

I just want to sleep!

My brain has felt like thick oatmeal for the past six weeks. I’m sleep deprived. And while I can function in society, anything that requires higher brain functions such as everything I have to do at work, takes far too long for me to complete. I figure five days is long enough of a trial, so I called today and told my doctor’s assistant that I’m still not sleeping through the night and asked for some Ambien CR which I know works after my flight to and from Japan a couple of years ago. Thankfully I was able to some samples from him again because this stuff is ridiculously expensive and of course since it likely works, my health insurance won’t cover a prescription to it. Go figure.

Tonight is my first night with the Ambien. Here’s to hoping…

(“what your soul sings” massive attack – 100th window)

[Update April 10th, 2010]

While the Ambien CR does kick in within a few minutes of taking the dosage, and it does offer me 4 hours of sleep before I wake up, after two nights of it working alright, the following two nights of medications didn’t even register. I felt a little “buzzed” but nearly as strong as before, and I only got three hours of sleep before I suddenly awoke. Instead of running the risk of gaining an addiction to the medications, I’m just not going to take them anymore. I’m going to try sleeping on the couch tonight to see if that helps.

[Update April 11th, 2010]

No luck, woke up every hour and a half. I’m seeing my physician tomorrow for blood lab-work, and then my psychologist Tuesday. -_-

Before Sabrina left last Thursday, we ordered out for chinese food from China Fair and got our usual Orange Beef and Beef Fried Rice. After eating I offered two of the fortune cookies to Sabrina, one in each hand, as is customary. She picked hers and we proceeded to open them and find out what kooky engrish we’d be presented with. I don’t remember what Sabrina’s said, but mine was quite special. The cookie contained not one, but two fortunes…

Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you.

and

Eat your fruits and vegetables to strengthen your health.

Firstly odd that there was more than one fortune, and doubly odd that they were quite specific and seemingly related. At least they seem related to me. So here I sit, hoping the Lunestra will finally do it’s magic after four days of woefully lacking performance and wondering what the future will bring.

So, June 23rd… will you perhaps offer my heart’s wishes? Or are you going to surprise me altogether?

(“is it me” vast – april)

A lot has been happening over the past few days because very little had happened over the past few years.

Without getting into the gory details, I’ll explain it this way; I have once again found myself in a pivotal point in my life, a point in which I must figure out who I am. It is at once wonderful and terrifying. Part of me wants to debate whether or not it is, or should be terrifying. Does growing up present itself as a terrifying notion if you’re not ready? Or is it simply human nature to fear the unknown? Is it fear? Is it merely a stronger than normal sense of caution? Is it reluctance? Is it the stubbornness of an easily complacent child? What am I?

The other time I found myself like this, I was in junior high school trying to figure out who I was. I had been the typical sexually charged reclusive geek with poor hygienic habits and a video game obsession that rivaled most girls’ fixation on their hair and whoever was popular in “Teen” magazine. After a bit of soul-searching seclusion, I emerged as a more presentable geek. Gaming lore and skills to match in a body that showered and shampooed every day, and even started wearing deodorant and occasionally spritzing on a little of my father’s Old Spice cologne. Nearly every day I would wake up at 6:00am (mind you, school didn’t start until 9:10am back then) to catch the shower before the rest of the family used up all of the hot water and I would blow dry my hair, I even used hair spray for a couple of years. Then I would walk three miles (yes, up hill) to the Junior High instead of waiting for and riding the bus because it got me there right before school and I wouldn’t have time to spend with my friends in the Library, or outside under the eves that linked all of the buildings. Many of the other kids would actually respond when I smiled and said “Hi” in the hallways instead of pretending to ignore me like they used to. I felt more self confidence and even did some homework from time to time, though nothing topped my time spent with video games and reading fantasy / sci-fi novels. Months would pass when I would borrow a book from the library (often 300+) pages, read it through most of my classes, read it walking home, read it as soon as I was finished with my paper route, read it through the evening and hours after I should have been asleep, then finish it walking back to school the next day, all to return it and borrow another book to begin the process all over again.

I have been a pack rat for as long as I can remember. I’m not sure why. Certainly my parents’ behaviors have rubbed off on me, but my brother and sister weren’t anywhere near as likely to store little trinkets to damn near everything. Take the picture above as an example. I was going through a bunch of stuff from my computer desk that was thrown into a box over two years ago when I moved out of my parent’s house.

And that’s just a few of the things in a 12″ cubed box of stuff. Everything has an emotional tie for me. Everything reminds me of something I did, or something I wanted to do, or someone who cared. Finding some of these things floods my mind with the past. Sometimes things I don’t think I ever would have remembered otherwise. Is it good to hold on to the past like this? Is the past holding me back from the future? At what point do I let go of who I was and let myself move on to the next step?

Judging by the multiple trips to the trash with many bags of novelty trinkets, unfollowed paths, and aborted ideas, I guess the proper question is rather; Why has it taken me so long to get to this point in my life, and where do I go from here?

(“optimistic” radiohead – kid a)