More Match Game Reactions

One of our panelists at Denver, Michael Brotherton, reports on his experience.

Yes, I'm still backlogged on my e-mail, although I did eventually manage to slog through the more than 500 messages on the SMOFS list and file them all away, and mostly restrained myself from replying to any of them.

The Hard Drive Mystery Continues

For those not following the comments on my previous discussions of the mysterious non-booting hard drives: I took the (working, will boot) 120GB hard drive and cloned it into one of the two 160GB drives, retaining the partition sizes so that the 160GB drive now has an unpartitioned 40 GB section on it. The clone will boot, so I don't think we can say there is anything mechanically wrong with that drive. For now, I'm going to stick with the 120 drive as my primary hard drive, using the 160 drive as its backup clone, and keeping the other, non-booting-but-otherwise-readable 160 drive as a fallback for any data or configuration files that I neglected to back up anywhere else.

The 120 drive, being a rebuild from bare metal and the WinXP installation disk, is relatively clean, but of course I'm going to be spending the next couple of months reinstalling things when I run across something that I hadn't yet needed.

Most frustrating was recreating my VPN and network connections to my company computer systems. At one point yesterday I had four computers running -- my personal laptop, company-issued laptop, and both desktops -- while I hunted up configuration information. I then had to take the personal machine to the upstairs conference room where we keep a connection to the outside world for visitors, as my personal machine won't connect to the company network at a company facility, only through VPN from the outside world. From there I could test all of the connections, which seemed to work okay. But when I got home, the first time I tried to connect everything got crazy for a while. After spending time on the phone with our IT desk, they hard-reset my network password, and the connections started working again.

This rebuild leaves me with a subtly different system. Fortunately, I'm not someone who must have his system exactly the way it always has been, but it's still mildly annoying to not be able to get things quite the way I was comfortable with them.

Gone Platinum

With the help of Cheryl and gigica, who helpfully let me make their room booking at the Crowne Plaza in Denver, I have now reached Platinum status in the Priority Club system (that's the Holiday Inn/IC Hotels Group affinity program). This includes things like a 50% bonus on points (was 10% on Gold status) and complimentary room upgrades (subject to availability, of course) on arrival.

I also find myself one night out of synch with another promotion, though, so I'm contemplating any reason I might have to stay in a Holiday Inn-chain hotel sometime in the next nine days to get that odd extra room night.

It Fits

New icon from here via whumpdotcom.