We at About Men Radio always talk about doing it yourself but I came across two things recently that I couldn’t easily do alone.
The first: My brother called me last month that he got the dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” on his computer.
I thought, OK not a tough fix.
He was already on the phone with his IT people at work, who told him to just get a new computer.
He was a concerned about getting his files off the old computer though.
I told him that I had the device for the job and it shouldn’t be a problem.
Well I brought out my USB 2.0 IDE transfer cable and when I took off the cover knew that I needed a SATA Cable adapter instead.
Not a biggie, but Staples and Best Buy didn’t have one, so I took the computer home with me and stopped off at Micro Center for the adapter. Yeah Micro Center!
I did notice something about how the hard drive was mounted in the computer.
The screws are situated to the left of the memory slots and to get a typical screwdriver or ratchet set in there you would need to pull the memory out.
Not wanting to do that and knowing that I had a screwdriver for the job, I just plugged the adapter into the mount instead.
I plugged it into my computer and voila! I was able to see all the files except “My Documents,” which came up blank.
I ran a properties search which yielded about 15GB, so there are files there, but I can’t see them.
I figured that there was a password feature that kept them hidden, so with a few magical keystrokes I was able to copy the files.
I think I’ll just plug in a new HD and reconfigure my new computer as a server. Sweet!
A few weeks ago Pedro and I were coming back from Pennsylvania after seeing the Howard Jones concert when he noticed that my car’s daylight was out.
The headlights and high beams were working OK.
The bulb cost about $22. I drove to Advance Auto Parts and figured that I would unscrew the old one and bring it in with me just to make sure that it was the right type and size.
When I lifted the hood, I grabbed the light housing and noticed that I didn’t have enough space to get the light out.
My nephew is always going on YouTube so I figured that I would do the same.
I was floored.
You need to take off the front fender to access the light housing. Needless to say that I brought it into the dealer.
So much for doing it yourself. I’m batting .500 which in baseball terms is actually pretty good.
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