Persistent Illusion was down for awhile yesterday during a fairly major WP upgrade. The changes should be mostly transparent. But if you find something that’s broken, please let me know!

I was minding my own business yesterday, doing a little computer stuff and uploading some files to PI, when WinXP decided to download some updates. And when WinXP wants to download updates, it wants complete control and it doesn’t stop to ask please even if you tell it to. I’ve had this happen twice before (update download during upload to web), and both times XP has been damaged.

This time my (nice, well-behaved, well-protected, working) computer has been turned in to a large doorstop. It’s a pretty, flashy, glowing doorstop, but a doorstop nonetheless.

Yep, it’s deader than Marley’s ghost. Deader than a doornail. Dead.

Try to boot: Cannot boot. System files corrupted or missing.

Try to repair: Blue Screen Of Death, BAD_POOL_CALLER

Say what?

In the end, I had to resort to reinstalling XP from scratch, which means I lost Windows knowledge of all of the software I have installed, some of which I need and use every day. Some of which gets me to the Internets. I tried something to “fix” it, and it’s gone back to being dead. No reason giving. Just won’t boot. So I will reinstall again. I have a backup that’s about 4 months old. It should be reasonably close. I haven’t done that many new things since then. So, reinstall again, and then restore, and then we’ll see.

I tried to use #1 Son’s (newly working) computer last night to check my e-mail, and I couldn’t get to the web on his computer either. And I couldn’t figure out why, I tried and tried and tried everything I knew. I worked at it for 2 hours last night (e-mail is a powerful incentive). I could talk to the network router, but that’s as far as I could go. It was very mysterious.

This morning I tried again. Still no go.

Then I went back to my desk to get something and noticed that the modem wasn’t working. See, it’s powered through the battery backup that my computer is on. And I’d turned it off when I shut down the doorstop.

That’s right, gentle reader, it does indeed work better if you plug it in.

Three hours killed to learn that little lesson. Ah well.

I planned on showing you knitting progress today. But, alas, the pictures are on my damn computer. There will be no pictures until I can get my computer talking to the world again. 😥

You will have to trust me when I say that the Fixation socks are coming along nicely, I’m almost ready to start working on the Rainbow socks again, and all that STR is yelling knit me, knit me.

[sigh] Computer things seem to come in waves. Once I get past this, it should settle down for awhile again. Here’s hoping!

I had a short reprieve last evening and I hoped to spend it knitting. Alas, it was not to be. Yesterday afternoon, my phone rang:

#1 Son: Mom, my computer is broken.

Mom: Define “broken.”

#1 Son: When I try to start it up I get a weird error message and when I press [OK] it reboots and the same thing happens over and over.

Mom: What does the error message say? Exactly.

#1 Son: Something about ‘lsass.exe access denied’ and then a message about something trying to access something it didn’t have rights to.

Mom: What were you doing?

#1 Son: Nothing! When I woke up this morning it wouldn’t boot.

Mom: I don’t think this is an over-the-phone thing. I’ll look at it when I get home.

#1 Son: OK. I’m going to use your computer then because I have to get this finished.

Mom: Download anything and you will die!

#1 Son: No problemo.

So, guess what I did last evening? Of course #1 Son was gone when I arrived home. I turned it on his computer and booted it up.

lsass.exe access denied

Which is Win XP’s rather cryptic way of saying, I don’t know who you are and I’m not even sure who I am and that being the case I don’t know if it’s OK for you to log in, so I’m not going to let you. And you can’t make me. So there. Nyah, nyah, nyah

It wouldn’t boot in safe mode. [lsass.exe access denied] It wouldn’t boot to a command line. [nyah nyah nyah nyah] I could get to the repair console, but not really do anything from there that would help. I could reinstall XP, but I tend to think of that as a last-resort solution.

In the end, I pulled out the hard drive and slaved it to my (nice, well-behaved, well-protected, working) computer, manually restored a few strategic config files from a prior restore point, put everything back together and blah, blah, blah (I’m sure all 10 of my readers are fascinated by this).

Welcome back to your desktop. Have a nice day.

I ran a virus scan on both computers, just in case. Nothing was found. The cause of the “breakage” will remain a mystery.

Yes, I realize our family is a little backwards. Most people would expect that it would be me calling my techie son to help fix my computer because it’s doing something weird. Nope. We’re the opposite. I built both of these computers, set up our home network, etc. I love to push buttons and tweak things and figure out how stuff works. For me, technology is a toy. For #1 Son, technology is a tool. He just wants it to work consistently and on demand, without regard to why or how.

I want it to work too. But I can’t say that I didn’t get a little bit of technoid geeky satisfaction from the little interlude.

It seriously cut into my knitting time, though.

I received the best Mothers’ Day present ever at 8:30 AM this morning when #1 Son walked in the door. I’m so glad to have him home!

After giving me a big hug, he said,

Hey, Mom, did you hear I’ve been in Alaska? I need to do laundry.

All is right with the world. 🙂

In techie news, I’ve upgraded to WordPress 2.0.2. I decided to wait awhile until most of the bugs had been shaken out. I think there may still be a couple of issues… but we’ll see.

Please let me know if you see anything “broken” or weird looking.

Today I learned that teaching, even of knitting, requires at least some talking.

I arrived at Dr. Grinder’s (not his real name) office precisely at noon, all ready for my root canal.

And how are we today? asked Dr. Grinder’s assistant. We’re just splendid. I replied.

Ms. Assistant (who was really very nice) took my history and talked about my tooth and laughed at the comment my dentist had made on my referral: She said that cold hurt worse, so I took pity on her and tested with heat. (I’ve known my dentist for 25 years. He has quite a sense of humor.)

Dr. Grinder, another truly nice person, came in. And how are we today? he asked. We’re just splendid I replied.

He began the usual poking and prodding and peering with mirrors and such. In the end he agreed with my dentist that the tooth did need a root canal. We’ll just numb you up and get to work. he said. You might have a little pain afterwards, but we’ll send you home with some medication to help.

Ahhh… thought I. The good stuff.

He numbed me and waited awhile. Then numbed me some more for good measure. By the time he started, 1/2 my head was numb from the eyebrows down to my chin. Next came the… well… you know… the root canal.

But then Ms. Assistant took a digital x-ray, and that was one of the coolest things I’ve seen for a long time. The pictures popped up on their computer in about 10 seconds. She could change the color and enhance the image and all kinds of cool stuff. That was really neat to watch. I would have asked more questions about it except my mouth was full of stuff and my head was numb.

Dr. Grinder wrapped up the procedure and removed all the equipment from my mouth. All done! He said brightly. I don’t think you’ll have much pain. I gave you an extra-long-lasting numbing agent. The worst part of a root canal is usually over after the first three or four hours, and you’ll be numb for at least 6 or 8 hours. Just take a couple of Advil when it wears off and call me if it’s too bad.

Wait a minute… I’m thinking… what about the good stuff? No good stuff? I’m going to be numb for 6 or 8 hours? no, no, no… I have to teach a class tonight…

But I have to teach a class! I said. Or at least that’s what I meant to say. It actually came out something like bmt I hvmg t tsch a clshh!

Just call if you have too much pain. Dr. Grinder said, and sent me on my way. All the way home, I kept wondering what I was going to do if I couldn’t talk.

#1 Son laughed at me when I got home because I couldn’t move half my face. I tried to eat some dinner (soft food, only). When I looked in the mirror, I realized that quite a bit of it had ended up outside my mouth. This was going to be interesting.

By the time I got to Tangle (I hear a song there…), some of the numb had worn off, and I could talk. I had to slurp my wine, which was rather embarrassing.

But I could talk. So I have no excuse for totally losing control of the class. No excuse at all. I think most of the students got the techniques I was attempting (badly) to teach. But I didn’t get as far as I would have liked to. I need to figure out how to make this work better. Hopefully next week will be different because there’s not as much to cover.

The numb is just now finally completely wearing off. Now. 10 hours later. I could use some of the good stuff.

There might be a bit of down time tonight around 5:00 PM PT while PI’s host, successfulhosting.com does a little maintenance. It’s all good.

The downtime should be only a few minutes. But if you notice anything weird (weirder than usual) or not working after 7:00 PM or so, please email me at .