Day: February 21, 2011

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The Cobbler’s Own Shoes…

*heh* Confession’s good for the soul but bad for the reputation… 😉

OK, so my last backup on this particular Win7 machine was a week ago. (Bad, cobbler! :-)) I know better. Windows is very fragile, and so many software publishers take liberties with their code that sometimes software installs/uninstalls just break Windows. It’s a fact of life, and one i know very, very well.

Got in a rush (always a mistake) and didn’t take a snapshot or even create a new System Restore Point before uninstalling an app I knew had its hooks pretty deep in the system.

Uninstall “required” a reboot (why?!? Because the authors were too stupid to make it uninstall cleanly, of course).

Toast.

No boot. The Windows installation had “disappeared” as far as Windows 7 and its repair tools (available on the installation disk) could tell. Oh, I could “see” it from the command line, but none of the command line tools could repair the startup elements (far more than just the MBR–numerous Windows system files as well) that had been corrupted.

So, disaster, right? Nah. Just moderately time-consuming, and not even all that big a distraction. I had the time today, and, after addressing the primary problem, I’ve been getting plenty of other things done while my data’s restored.

Key? A custom install of Win7. The custom install saved all my old data in a Windows.old folder–including ALL the data that had changed since my last real backup. Nothing lost whatsoever.

Next, I went to Ninite and selected all the free softwares the site had available that I had previously had installed. Saved the installer, invoked it and just let it run during dinner.

Then I had only to install a few specialty programs I had bought and archived. I could have dug out the disk they’re all archived on (or pulled the installation files from a backup), but since I also had the installation files and registration keys saved in that Windows.Old folder, I just reinstalled them from there.

Bob’s your uncle.

Oh, a couple of lil niggling things: resetting my Win7 startup background required editing a Registry Key and creating two folders in my Windows folder, but that’s the kind of thing I can almost do in my sleep, so no biggie. Getting rid of the stupid default image file for my account picture (I have a nice pic of an American Bison that I prefer to use for that–and yes, I pulled it from that same Windows.Old folder :-)) : check.

OK, done. And the only thing I “lost” (for now) is my Freecell score of 1,923 wins, no losses. No biggie, as I’m at 1,735-0 on another computer… *heh* (I play it a lot while on the phone as a kind of “Freecell Zen” relaxation thing.)

Heck, even my VMs survived the new install of Windows. Just reinstalled VirtualBox, copied over the pertinent folder, a lil fiddling and… done.

Funny thing: the app that caused all the problems with the uninstall was an older–too much older–version of Acronis True Image. *heh* I had a full version to install (not as an upgrade) and needed to ditch the older version (too old to upgrade, you see *sigh*). Oh, I certainly could have just used an image snapshot from last week, using the (old) Acronis boot CD, but this way I

have all my data
do NOT have that OLD version of True Image I had uninstalled
have a fresh Win7 install, that’s already updated in the background (Note to self: turn off automagic updates as soon as this round is through *heh*).

All in all, a pretty good thing. I just wish Windows weren’t so fragile. Oh, well, at least it’s easy-peasy to repair, even when its own repair tools fail.

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About Those So-Called “Contributions to Civilization”

The Islamic world is credited with slightly more than a few contributions to civilization: algebra, so-called”Arabic” numerals, the sphericity of the Earth, etc.

Let’s take a look at these and then ask a more pertinent question. Algebra–invented by Muslims? Not. Stolen from Hindu mathematicians and used by Islamic “scholars” mostly for asstrology. Heck, not just stolen, crippled by the removal of the concept of negative numbers as being inconsistent with Islam.

“Arabic” numerals? Again, stolen from Hindus.

The sphericity of the Earth? Propounded by Pythagoras in the fifth century B.C. and, quite contrary to the myth passed around today, commonly accepted by scholars throughout the West from his day until now.

And so it goes with Muslim “contributions” to civilization. Heck, Averoes, the single “greatest” Muslim “scientist” had as his magnum opus not anything discovered by him but a commentary on… Aristotle (an “unbeliever”–well, he had to be, since he predated that mass murdering, savage con man, Mohamed, by centuries).

More, what has Islam “contributed” (read for “contributed” “stolen, hoarded and parceled out abstemiously at great price or had hornswaggled from the greedy grasp of barbaric Muslims”) since its first few hundred years of conquest and pillage?

Zip. Nothing that could not be found elsewhere first and better for not having passed through Muslim hands.

Of course, this is why Muslims feel the need to make exorbitant and unwarranted claims about Muslim “contributions” to civilization. They ave essentially made none, and deep, deep down justly feel inferior. Their entire world view is to blame, of course. Any world view that can revere the sayings of a mass murdering piece of dog vomit like Mohamed is a world view of savages.

But all this begs the question asked by Stanislaw Lec,

“Is it progress if a cannibal uses a knife and fork?”

Or, more applicable to today,

“Is it progress if a follower of the mass murderer, rapist, slaver, torturer and serial liar, Mohammed, steals the technology to build his own atomic bomb?”