Well, um, lets see, there’s a fair amount to say, quite a lot of cursing – some good things too……where to begin.
I’ll begin with Chris. Chris is beginning to really bug me….it’s not that he’s incompetent, although he is fairly, it’s not that he’s unwilling to admit his mistakes, or try and correct them – although that’s irritating. No, it’s his obsession with money. I just can’t hack it – it’s not that he want’s enough money to be comfortable, and not worry (which is what I want) – no – he wants to be rich. Now I’ll make jokes about it, and yes, I wouldn’t object to being rich – however I’m not actively running about after money, I have better things to do with my time.
But he seems to be obsessed. He plays at virtual stock brokering – so he can decide if he wants to do it for real, and seemed seriously upset when he lost virtual money – not like really upset, but at the same time there was a definate feeling that he expected to be making lots of money.
Now all of the above might be okay, I could probably put up with it….were it not for the fact that he feigned an interest in IT to get this job – but actually, he has bugger all interest in IT. He wants to be a manager – and he reckons the quickest route to getting a well paid managerial job is through IT. Now for some reason I find that imensely offensive. I do my job, well, I did my job because I enjoyed it – I now do it because I have to – but I’m looking for something which I’ll enjoy and which is more challenging.
I in IT because I love working with computers. He does not, infact he hasn’t got the faintest glimmer of interest in them past reading his e-mail and surfing the web. And somehow that annoys me.
Anyway, yes, then we’ll move onto today (can anyone guess that Kate’s making you all wait for the big news?). Yes. So today (well Friday) was to be the big upgrade day. I prepared my disks, I have all the drivers, the service packs….everything.
I backed up as much as I could, I fdisked….and that’s where the trouble began. First of all, I had to use Linux FDisk to remove all the partitions because cruddy MS Fdisk won’t deal with Non-Dos partitions. Grr. So. Anyway, I’ve got rid of all my partitions, and I divide up the disk: 2Gig, 3Gig (split into a 2Gig and a 1Gig), Gig.
They were to be assigned as follows:
| Drive | OS | Format | |
| 2Gig | WinNT 4 | Fat16 – so I can dual boot. | |
| 2Gig (of 3) | Win88SE – For Games | Fat32 | |
| 1Gig (of 3) | No OS – For Data | Fat 16 – so both NT and W98 can read it | |
| 3Gig | Linux | Split sensibly for Linux | |
However a small spanner appeared in the works. I was told, by various websites that W95’s format utility (and indeed 98’s) would default to fat16 for disk sizes of 2 Gig and below…..
Hence the 2 Gig WinNT partition. Unfortunately, having created the partitions with MS-DOS FDisk, I discovered that it’s definition of 2000Mb is different to mine, it’s being 2000.2, which appeared to be enough to flick it over to fat32. Of course I didn’t realise this until I tried to install NT, got all the way through copying the files, watched it reboot – and die. This came after I’d setup W98 too…
So, having discovered this I repartitioned the drive – and you at this point realise just how irritating MS-DOS FDisk is….why? Because it repeatedly verifies the disk. All the damn time. It’s reqally, really, really irritating.
Anyway, having repartitioned, I reformated, reinstalled 98, and lo – the disk was still Fat32.
Now I was at a loss. What the hell could I do? Then it hit me. PC DOS 7. My saviour, which incidentally refuesed to install, but allowed me to repartition the disks, quick format drive c as Fat16 and then reinstall 98.
At this very moment the NT installer is attempting to do it’s stuff. Although it fell over when it tried to reboot which I take as a bad sign – but there’s not much I can do but carry on.
Should it fail then I’ll try W98 SE as my only OS, but right now I’m so fed up of the 9x kernal that I can’t imagine that lasting long. The option of intalling just Linux reared it’s head earlier, and it’s becoming more and more popular with me, simply because every MS OS I’ve tried to install since getting this machine has not worked the way it should. Anyway, we’ll see if this has worked.
Well, that’s a resounding no. The machine simply hangs if I let it try and boot into NT, I don’t know if I should try just NT, First we’ll try Just NT, Although I think my HDD is beginning to get fed up of being verifed, partitioned, formated, reformated, reverifed…..
One thing that has amused me is that, and I hope the data survived as what saved it ist the fact that the drive is faulty, and so when – being fairly tired I actually attempted to format this disk – with all my backup data on….it clicked away and couldn’t format it – and I hit Ctrl-C in time!
Right….that’s it. W98 for games, and Linux for serious work. I give in.
Microcrap have pissed me off for the last time. What caused it? Well, I thought ha! Just use NT4 – that’s the ticket to sucess – but no. Because NT 4 won’t read Fat32 – which is where all my backup data is – they can stick it up their proverbial arse. I’ve paid for my last peice of MS Crapware ever. The machine will, for the time being dual boot 98 and Linx. Why 98 – for games and my Hollywood + decoder card.
Right; now that that’s sorted….(it’s formating c as I type) I’ll tell you the exciting news. If anyone’s made it this far…..
I’ve got an interview…..as me. This came about due to me being slightly tired, and also thinking that this was some midget little recruitment firm, and I’d never get anything from them, much like I get absolutely nowt from the companies I’m registered to as “Andre”. However I was mistaken, seriously so.
What makes me say that? Well, quite simply – he e-mailed me the next day with job opportunities, then rang me at work and now I’ve got an interview…..and part of me is bouncing….(no, not those parts! Not yet anyway!) – and part of me is, how shall we say, TERRIFIED!
Anyway, I’m quite looking forward to it in a sheer terror kind of way anyway – and it’s an excuse for me to get more stuff for myself – so I’m off shopping in Reading later today!
Right – I’m off to persuade this p-of-c windows install to actually boot in – and then I’ll be off…..we hope.
G’night!
Kate.
