Windows WILL mess with your mind

I was going to install a rather large program, and knew that this would take a while, so I started the installation and went on to do some laundry and other household chores while the computer chugged at it. When I decided that it was about time the installation had finished, it turned out the computer had spontaneously rebooted. Strange, I thought, since the installation was not one that normally required a reboot, and also becaise of it did then it would certainly have waited for me to let it. After logging in I found that the program was only partially installed. Aha, so we were looking at a crash. Possibly my bad as I had left several programs running parallel with the installation. The bothersome part was that a number of notes and other stuff that I had, stupidly, left unsaved were now lost, until such a time that I manage to excavate them from memory, if ever.

So then I started the installation anew, freshly rebooted, with no programs clogging up the system that I could see, and popped off to finish some more of the household chores that I had left. Checking back ten minutes later (knowing the installation to take some 15-20 minutes), I again found the login screen blinking seemingly innocent at me, evidence of another crash.

Somewhat annoyed at this, especially as this had never been a problem with this particular program before, I decided to sit down and watch. I started the installation a third time and sat at the screen, eyes never wavering, to see where and when the installation would fail.

Five minutes later my mind longed for something more to do than just watch the progress bar slowly traverse the screen from left to right one minute pixel at a time. Another fifteen minutes further I had lost at Solitaire to the count of minus twelve hundred points, and the installation finished without a glitch.

So the lesson learned, and the morale of the story if you can call it that, is that any task the computer is set to finish on its own, not requiring any interaction from you at all, and that will take considerable time, especially if you have other things to do at the same time, will still require your full attention for its full duration or it will fail.

How to transfer your old Hamachi 1.x account to Hamachi²

LogMeIn has upgraded their Hamachi software from version 1.x to Hamachi². There are major differences between the two programs, and moving your existing setup from one to the other is not as straight-forward as one would wish.

Scenario A: You already have Hamachi 1.x installed and running

Simply install Hamachi². It will detect and transfer the account from the old program to the new one. All account settings and network memberships will be preserved.

Scenario B: You are installing Hamachi² on a freshly installed computer that previously ran Hamachi 1.x

1. First install Hamachi 1.x
   
2. Copy your backed-up Hamachi 1.x config files into the configurations folder (typically C:\Users\YOURNAME\AppData\Roaming\Hamachi).
   
3. Start up Hamachi 1.x and check that everything is working
   
4. Install Hamachi². It will detect and transfer the account from the old program to the new one. All account settings and network memberships will be preserved.
   

In the case of scenario B, it is vitally important that you have your config files backed up, or you're screwed to begin with and have to start your Hamachi account over from scratch anyway.

As for backing up your Hamachi² settings, I have tried to follow the instructions on their FAQ pages but failed to make that work. This may have something to do with the computer I tested it on. I will update this post when or if I figure out how to get it right.

The procedure described above is based on answers in the Hamachi forums, "Migration: Hamachi 1.* to hamachi2"

Eight years after WTC

As the end titles to Nicolas Cage's "World Trade Center" roll over the TV screen ...

The generation before mine were the ones who got asked the question "where were you when Kennedy got shot?". We got the towers.

I was at home, just turned on the radio whilst making lunch and getting ready for my late shift at work. There was talk of a plane that had hit one of the Twin Towers. From the sound of it I got the impression that some guy with bad luck and worse flying skills had the tail of his Cessna hanging out of an office window, or something like that.

When I got to work, however, I got slapped in the face with the news that the Cessna had turned into two jumbo sized airliners. Not long after that we got fresh video of the first tower collapsing, mere minutes after it happened.

I do support work for an ISP. There weren't many calls that day, presumably because most people were glued to the TV for pretty obvious reasons. Most of the ones who did call wanted help to watch the foreign (i.e. American and British) news channels on the 'Net. Although it was outside our support area in those days, having thoroughly searched the Web ourselves to find decent video streams we were quite able to assist.

Casualty estimates at the time varied between ten and thirty thousand, and the media coverage was a complete overload. I think the pictures of those who jumped were the ones that hit me the hardest. I can watch recordings of the crashes and the collapses with a kind of morbid fascination, but the jumpers still get me.

I'm not American, I live pretty far from New York and Ground Zero, and I've never even been there, but with the familiarity of those buildings and the rest of the NYC cityscape from movies and otherwise, it felt as if it was happening in my own neighbourhood.

As it happens we got our Parliament election results that same morning, and I was going to email a handful of American friends some humorous thoughts about the odd thing of suddenly having a religious leader (priest) for Prime Minister. That whole thing sort of boiled away in the events of the day ...