Computers hate me.
I have come to this conclusion after an extremely frustrating weekend attempting to transfer files from my old Win95 computer to my new WinXP machine. This is supposed to be a relatively simple task, due to the fancy file transfer wizard the crew at Redmond have bundled with the XP CD.
Simple my arse.
The first thing I required was a serial cable, so I got up nice and early Saturday morning to go down to Discount Computer Supplies and pick one up. So I did (after completely baffling the bored teenager at the desk with my requests for a “null modem” cable, I mean what kind of training do they give these kids?) and walked home, only to discover that in my haste I’d actually purchased a 19 pin joystick extension cable.
Good one.
I was going into the city that afternoon anyway so I decided to buy a serial cable then, rather than go back and weather the scorn of the bored teenager. So this I did, buying it from the new Dick Smith Electronics store which was having some kind of opening celebration complete with a guy standing out the front handing out ugly yellow balloons. Then (because as it turned out the line was closed for repairs) I had to catch a hot, smelly bus home instead of the luxurious (in comparison), air conditioned train I was expecting. So, I arrived home somewhat sweaty and smelly but triumphant, ready to transfer all my files across.
I plugged in the cable, started up the wizard on both machines and worked my way through the seemingly endless series of menus. Then, finally, I clicked the “autodetect” buttons on both machines, and waited for them to link up.
And waited.
And waited.
The dialogue claimed that it might take “a minute” for the machines to find each other, so I left them alone for half an hour and sorted my CDs, knowing that Microsoft’s interpretation of time is somewhat different to that of mere mortals. But still, after getting all my albums neatly in order, there was no change. I disconnected, and thought about what to do.
The next three to four hours were spent trying various com port combinations, devising intricate methods to determine if said com ports were actually working (they were) and swearing. This achieved absolutely nothing and at the end of the day I went to bed extremely frustrated, and $40.00 in the hole from the cables.
Today I decided to try again, after installing all the lastest Microsoft upgrades. Still no dice. Then I decided to try transfering a few vital files via the floppy drive option of the wizard. Unfortunately it seems you can’t transfer “just a few” files, you have to do the lot all in one go, and since I don’t have 2.5 gig worth of floppies hanging around, I had to scratch that idea as well.
Finally I reluctantly decided to do the obvious, and transfer those important files smaller than 1.4 meg over via floppy disk. This at least would allow me to get some work done. So I dug out some blank floppies, and got to work, swapping disks back and forth.
Then the floppy drive on my old computer died.
There are days when I wonder if the whole universe isn’t some kind of gigantic farce with me in the central role. If in some kind of parallel dimension my life isn’t a high rating sit-com. If people aren’t gathering round the benzene cooler at work, clutching their morning cups of amonia in their seven fingered hands saying things like “Did you see Denys last night? It was hilarious! He was trying to copy files between his computers and everything went wrong!”. It’s probably billed as “The show about a nobody with something for everybody”.
Anyway after a lot of cursing I went and borrowed dad’s computer and did a drive transplant, cutting up my right hand rather nastily on some sharp edged support struts in the process. So I am now sitting here typing this, in between shuffling disks and files back and forth between my new computer, and the extra floppy drive hanging out the side of my old computer like some kind of hideous growth.
I’m not a happy chappy.
My best theory is that the cable I bought from Dick Smith’s is faulty. I could go into town and get a replacement, but frankly I’m too annoyed to even bother. I’ll stop into Discount Computers tomorrow on the way home from work and see if I can get the joystick cable exchanged for another serial cable, and see if that works. If it does, I’ll demand my money back from Dick Smiths. I don’t care if he’s flown a helicopter over Antarctica, I want a refund!
Hrumph.
In other news I’ve added some links to the upper right of the Wyrmlog so you can jump straight to various parts of Wyrmworld, and send me emails. This last one in particular has been long lacking, I can’t believe I missed it before. So send the flames rolling in!
Oh, and we’ve put up a new website for GTP. You can most clearly see my influence in the sample text in the “Basic HTML” page under “Client Support”. Nothing like the classics to spruce up a website!
