Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Exceptional Penguin News

The exceptional news came in a couple of days ago but I didn't see it until just now.  I apologize and I love the pic.  It looks kosher for posting and also looks cool as hell.  Is that a go, Lotho?

If you have never seen a penguin with maroon hair or one with gold hair, this is your lucky day or it will be if Lotho says ok.


There was additional coolness since there was a complete save of all the data files from the old Mac.  The only thing needed now is to power it up one more time to zero the disks and then the computer can be recycled with the monitor.  There was no way that computer would go out the door if the data had not been pulled and I'm not sure but Yevette will probably want or require the disks be cleared also and I do recommend that.

This is a great victory since it wasn't clear whether the box would even boot but that happened and the rest was effortless, no more than drag and drop after I made the connection to her system.  That kind of blows getting heroic about the feat but it's pleasing to see that's covered.


The reason I know Yevette would not release the old computer is she has two extremely old Windows machines and there are things she wants recovered from them.  Now I'm kind of curious if it's even possible.  I'm not convinced they will even boot but it would be worthwhile to open the cases to blow them out so they at least have a chance.

One of the machines might be Windows 95 while the other is Windows 98 and I have experience with the latter but all prior use of Windows had been in the early days, with a PC3270 card to emulate the mainframe 327x CRT without any concomitant use of Windows software, and in the later days (i.e. 2000+), I came to Windows 98 and had the requirement for the use of Windows software (e.g. Project, etc).

My involvement with Apple started early and right from the start Windows was just a waste of time since it did nothing of any particular value relative to what I did.  Music and graphics software developed later for Windows but by then it didn't make any difference and it wasn't as good as the Mac software for those purposes anyway.


Venturing into the world of Windows is spooky enough but making a network connection to that den of vipers is fraught with peril.  This may die before it gets started.  I need to review with Yevette what kind of data she needs to save.

Maybe we need a scale as follows:

Irreplaceable pictures of family
...
Selfies in front of the World's Biggest Ball of String in Indiana (or somewhere else)
...
Butt shots my cellphone cam took when I sat on it

Update:  the OCD got me and I had to know.  That huge ball of string is in Kansas.  (RoadsideAmerica.com:  World's Largest Ball of Twine)

That really would be heroism to wade about in Windows since that would seriously suck.  Doing that for butt shots just doesn't get it so I need an Yevette Ruling ... would you say the content is closer to irreplaceable family or butt shots?

8 comments:

Kannafoot said...

More than likely, the best way to salvage data off those hard drives is to pickup a mount that turns an internal drive into an external drive. (It looks like a phone docking station.) That way, you can plug the now-external drive into a fully functioning PC without having to depend on the drive having a functioning BOOT sector. There's also software out there that can recover just about anything if you can get the drive to spin. So, depending on how bad you want what's on it, there are ways of doing it.

As to the "cleansing" of drives, well, as I'm sure you know the only way to do it is to have the drives shredded. Even the old-style method of raining binary zeros over it seven times is no longer considered safe. (You can also take a heavy duty drill to the drive and put multiple holes in it, assuming you a) have a heavy duty drill bit, and b) have clamps to hold it in place.)

Unknown said...

Thanks on the actual recovery possibilities and they sound gruesome but you know sysproggery painfully well and that's where we get to the value of the user's data, isn't it. If it's irreplaceable family pictures then suck up the gruesome. But, ask the user, when it comes to recovering data, every sperm is sacred. Sing along everybody! (larfs)

I just got that confirmation and, yep, irreplaceable family pictures. How did I know that was coming.

You have confirmed also the security situation is worse than it was in terms of keepubg rats out of your data but the wastefulness is really abhorrent so I've got to go with probabilities. That will be one part ethical standard of the recycler and many parts too many devices to make much chance this particular device would turn up on the cover of the New York Times. That kind of argues don't do anything since they can get it anyway but at least deleting files will stop amateurs.

Anonymous said...

As for penguins--saw an interview with Howie Mandel re his daughters's wedding. The brother of the bride was dressed in a penguin suit. A rock/stone was placed by the groom at the brides feet. If she accepts the stone than the wedding is on!! That's how penguins do it!! Makes ya think of a wedding coming up?

Unknown said...

I haven't looked it up but many birds mate for life so that rock counts! For that wedding, I would have to try to get there even if I have to crawl!

Anonymous said...

I dunno...maybe those penguin suits could get another run?

Anonymous said...

P.S. Still waiting in that Christmas card but has not shown up as yet :(

Anonymous said...

This one will tear at your heart!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdobQxB3_YY

Unknown said...

I'm sure those penguin suits could play in a big way just about any old time. No matter what else is happening, a herd of penguins is going to turn some heads.

Rats on the card. That sucks and it's a surprise when they delivered the big one quickly. Hopefully it's at least this year!

Pairing that song with the penguins was brilliant. It looks like it was made for them.