That lovely new computer I bought a year ago...? Its hard drive died a slow and painful death after just 11 months (grrr)   Errors apparently undetectable by Dell diagnostic software that might have got it changed for free under warranty...

First signs of impending badness: odd segfaults, mostly with apt.  Then my filesystem started randomly going read only, with system logs showing a lot of I/O errors and problems with the journalling.  hmm.  To start with, nothing a reboot and quick forced fsck wouldn't fix.

But then it obviously got worse, and any 'repairs' lasted all of 2 minutes before yet more errors sprang up   I'm getting quite good at intensive fscking from a live CD now though! Even tried reformatting and reinstalling, but that took about 4 attempts because it kept crashing with filesystem errors.  bah!

So I gave up, and ordered a new hard drive. And a new stick of memory, to upgrade it to a nice even 4Gb (and make my order qualify for free saver delivery)

And as if that wasn't bad enough, my TV died.

Well, the freeview box did anyway.  But a CRT TV is somewhat useless without one of those now.  Some pondering later, I decided to just buy a new telly rather than just spend £20 on a new freeview box.

Added that on to the existing order, paid for next day (I was getting bored and impatient!), then got annoyed when it failed to turn up last Friday as expected.  Ebuyer support not entirely helpful there, but they claim they've refunded the next-day surcharge so we shall see.

Finally, nearly two weeks after initially ordering the HDD, it all arrived on Monday.  New gadget excitement!

So now I give you... "Katy's guide to hard drive replacement in a stupidly small form factor PC":

1. remove purple case top, easy peasy!
2. fail to unscrew the top inner layer due to shitty screwdrivers.  completely shred one whilst forcibly removing it.  swear lots
3. realise shit screwdrivers aren't going to reach the rest of the screws anyway
4. go to B&Q to buy new screwdrivers
5. swap dead disk for functioning new one
6. replace most of the screws, apart from one that's far too fiddly on the drive caddy, and the broken one from the top bit

next up, the RAM upgrade:

1. when ordering, completely forget that there are two sizes of memory: PC and Laptop
2. get pissed off upon realising that desktop machine uses laptop RAM
3. send memory back for a refund

So, half successful! The new telly's good too, plays DVDs and everything.  Also has a USB port which I'm yet to investigate, but apparently I can record things.  oooh.

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Part two of "making the most of days off work" - a weekend walking in Rhayader.  (by 'weekend' here I mean Sunday and Monday, but that's a minor technicality).

This plan wasn't decided until Sunday lunchtime, and since it's a 2 hour drive away I think I did quite well to start walking at half 3!

I'd paddled a small section of the Upper Wye in February, so decided to spend a couple of days completing this stretch.  Started from the layby at Pont Marteg, I walked up through Gilfach nature reserve (next to the Afon Marteg) then over a hill and back down into Rhayader. 

beautiful scenery, looking down on the Marteg!

For the return I just walked along the A470.  Probably not entirely recommended, as it's quite a busy road (though not too bad late Sunday afternoon) and hiking on tarmac isn't my favourite thing...

Pitched the tent at Wyeside campsite, dunked my feet in the river to cool them down, then wandered into town in search of food.

Monday started earlier than I'd intended, on account of getting boiled out of the tent before 8am!  Once I'd packed up and left at about 9, it was already 21° outside and glorious cloud-free sunshine.  Definitely shorts weather! (my walking trousers are double zip-offs, so can do full length, 3/4 and shorts.  awesome)

My phone needed charging, so I drove the long way to my walk start point - to Llangurig, and down some country lanes (which I'd later walk along).  After about a mile, I found some friends:

yes, I was taking photos whilst driving. tut tut.  But I was only doing about 3mph and getting bored...

That was all I saw for almost 3 miles! Sheep's backsides!  A lady appeared from a house at one point, and told me not to worry too much as they were "notorious" for getting onto the road (and had been in her garden earlier too).  Eventually they chose a field to aimlessly wander into, and I reached the little village (hamlet?) of Dernol.

Walked about 3km on roads, then the path veers off and up a hill.  One minor detour where I missed a not-very-obvious marker post (hooray for map reading skills), but other than that this bit of the route was very well signposted.  Certainly along the top of the hill there were plenty of posts, including this one next to a somewhat redundant stile.

Great views from up there too, despite it having clouded over a little bit (which I was actually quite grateful for).  The wind farm on the other side of the valley didn't seem to be up to much.

Eventually dropped back down through Clochfaen and into Llangurig, where I had a quick lunch in the Black Lion pub.  And also picked up the 3rd wvw passport stamp of the weekend - not bad going!

From Llangurig, it was... continue reading »

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