Entries this day: Early_flight_to_Kagoshima Email_to_Charmain Finished_Clinic_today Hard_drives How_to_swap_HD_on_MacBook

Early flight to Kagoshima

5:58am JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

Good morning! I got on the 5:46am train to Yokohama and will switch to Keikyu and head to Haneda airport, then to CPC for a final final (?) check up.

Email to Charmain

Charmain!!

Aight, I am composing this while offline, and now that you've helped us switch from asking "what's
up wit' you???" to actually *answering*, I hope we can switch from FB to "real" email, just because
my brain likes to have all the important bits in one place.

> It's hard to sum up the past, ooooh, 14 years or so, in a couple
> of sentences but you did a really nice job of that!  ;-)

I actually have no idea what I wrote as a summary, but here's a start of more than a couple
sentences (I'll have to change trains before I finish).

I ended up in Japan after deciding I wanted to learn a "difficult" language, one with
letters I didn't know how to pronounce.  I also wanted a "safe" country with fresh water
and stable government.  With my limited world knowledge and even less research, I came up with
Japan.  Sometimes I wish I had chosen China or an Arabic speaking country, but I don't really want
to start over again now.


> I'm not really surprised you live in a place where, rumor has it, they prefer you remove your shoes.

Yah, we get to take off shoes inside, but I want to take them off *outside*!!  Now that I live near
the beach, I've been doing that; I'm just wearing flipflops today, but I'm getting way ahead of my
14 year biomary (biography-summary)

Went to UH for 5 happily barefoot years, during which I chased a lot of girls and studied enough to
get a 2.? GPA overall and a Comp Science degree to boot.

Got engaged to a lovely woman named Wende, bought a house with her, then realized I wouldn't be
happy if I settled so soon, and told her I had to go.  Super huge blessings to her for being so
understanding!  I'm glad to hear she's married with babies now.  Perhaps next lifetime we'll
reconnect.

Before going to Japan, I figured I should see my own country so I drove around the US 11,000 miles
in two road trips from my new base in Dallas at my lovely g/f janette's house.

Ah shipes; my station has arrived.  er, we have arrived at the station.

Okay, I'm going to interrupt this biomary for a little rant.  I'm pissed that I have to go through
useless security checkpoint including taking off my belt, my computer out of my backpack, and having
my *water* examined because some arrogant motherfuckers destroyed the World Trade Center so they
could make big bucks and start wars in middle east.  I'm lookin' at Dick Cheney as the prime suspect
and Larry Silverstein as prime initial benefactor.

Start your research with WTC 7, if you haven't already.

Bah humbug.  I don't want to write anymore.

Okay, it's a few hours and two ice creams later; I can continue writing about the past 14 years.

Um, came to Japan, worked as an "English teacher" (some call it edutainment) for 2 years,
then got to do the most amazing trip in the world: sailing around the world on PB.  Short stops in
each port, but a lot of ports!  The itinerary is on my website somewhere...

Met many amazing people including a woman who said she was from Palestine.  I was like, "yeah
I've heard of Pakistan, but never been there," "Not Pakistan; Palestine."

So after the PB voyage, I went to Palestine for 6 weeks to see what's the real story between the
Israeli and Palestinian conflict (a whole separate story, but my short version is the Palestinians
are not being treated humanely by the Israeli police-army)

Then went on PB *again*, this time around the world focusing on the southern hemisphere (though we
didn't visit Antarctica, Australia nor New Zealand, all three of which I woulda enjoyed)... we *did*
stop at Easter Island, which is amazingly beautiful!!

Arrived back in Japan with no job, only $200 dollars, my bicycle and a plan to ride from Tokyo to
Kyoto for a 10 day vipassana meditation course.  Did the course (quite difficult, but quite
recommended if you're interested in a silent meditation for 10 days, free of charge) and then rode
my bicycle back toward Tokyo but hit a car a broke my shoulder when I was just one day away from my
goal.

Damn.  Didn't have insurance, so I borrowed money and paid $4000 in medical bills over the next two
years, during which I worked as an English teacher and then as a programmer.

Lost my job in December thanks to badly managed company (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it),
then got a "job" as a lab rat and made $10,000 for a month's hospital stay taking
anti-depressants (which didn't work, btw), after which I started living with my friend Soness near
the beach, and now have a new programming job that starts on Monday.

I've basically skipped all the relationship-side of my life: was engaged to wonderful Wende, but
wasn't ready to settle; then great connection with janette (before and start of Japan) but wasn't
ready to settle, then chaotic relationship with Hitomi in Japan and on PB, then much nicer
relationship with Ami after my bicycle accident, but just recently broke up with her, citing core
value, activity and language differences as unworkable for me.

Now I'm single and reading a book called No More Mr. Nice Guy, which seems to have suggestions for
how I can stop chasing women and be happy just being me.

> Myself, I doubt I can be that concise...

Well, I kept it pretty short above; you can waste a lot of time reading all the details starting at
http://robnugen.com/journal.pl?type=all&date=1988/08/23 to get caught up since high
school.

> I was in Alaska for 9 of those years... it's great there... during the summer.  I threaten to
move back every once in awhile, although I don't REALLY want to endure 50 below EVER again!

OMG 50 below would be a nightmare for me... Perhaps for like 5 minutes it would be a fun novelty,
but man... 9 years????  In which city?  Why?  PB stopped in a city on the southern coast of Alaska,
though I can't remember the name at the moment.

> I'm single, well, sorta... "it's complicated" is probably a better description...
> but content with the un-relationship, as I like to call it, that I'm in.

Good to hear!  Where did you meet this mysterious shadow?

> Currently, I work at Dow chemical as a lab tech, but I'm about to go back to college this fall
Sounds great!  I'm considering going back to school; for me it would be a school called Clairvision,
which says it helps raise the voltage of consciousness.  Meditation, and awareness of subtle
energies around us.


> I'm gonna go try out Reflexion since you've got my curiosity up now...

Cool!  Do you have an iPhone to play reflexion?  Either way, you should make some levels and tell me
what they're called so I can test them out for you!

   Love Love
    - Rob!

Finished Clinic today

11:29am JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

I'm already finished at the clinic (I was scheduled for 1:30pm, but caught the doctor at just the right moment); I was shown then signed the new informed consent form (minus one sub-investigator's name), showed my athlete's toe had healed, then got 15,000 yen for my time and am back in the taxi headed back. Will easily make the 1:30 flight.

12:18pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

Now it's not quite as certain that I'll make the 1:30 flight, but I did enjoy gelato at まな's shop, where 大人さん took me last time I was on an Ice Cream Quest here in Tenmonkan. I got the 12:20pm airport limosuine (bus with reclining seats) so I hope to still make the flight.

5:40pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

I missed the 1:30pm flight, by just a few minutes, by my reconing, (ten minutes?) and got some food while waiting till the 3:50pm flight. Now I'm on the Keikyu Line train in Haneda airport, bound for 品川 and from there 秋葉原 where I'll be in computer nerd paradise and get a 1TB external drive for hopefully less than 28,000 yen, and a new internal drive for my MacBook, and a Torx 8 driver to do the hardware swap. Kinda sucks about getting the driver; I won't likely need to use ... hey I wonder if Andrew has such drivers!

Hard drives

7:16pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

Mmmmm sweet sweet storage.....

I now have a 500GB Seagate (5400.6 RPM) internal drive for my PC (for 9,990 yen) and a 1TB Lacie d2 quadra (7200 RPM) external drive (for my PC) (for 20,400 yen), and went ahead and bought a cool multi-screw-torx-driver cause it features 28 driver tips including torx and others for just 1580 yen, i.e. not much compared to what I spent on drives.

And I'm now in Tokyo station on the Shonan-Liner train, which costs and extra 500 yen, but I get a nice seat and nice view outside.

Hmmm I hope this train stops in Chigasaki. I'm pretty sure it's the same one Soness and I took from Shinagawa once, so it'll be okay.

8:37pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

It was okay. Home now!

How to swap HD on MacBook

9:57pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

I've just recently purchased a Lacie external 1TB and a Seagate 500 GB internal drive to replace my existing 70GB internal drive.

I've got OS X Leopard (10.5.7) and figure I might as well use Time Machine instead of SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.

Now, the thing is, Time Machine requires having the Leopard DVD handy for the restore process, which apparently SuperDuper and CCC don't require.

I've done a modicum of research (time machine bootable and time machine new internal drive), and came up with the following steps that I'm implementing now:

(I got all my hardware at 秋葉館 (Akibakan) in Akihabara, the electronics paradise in Tokyo)

1. Find your Leopard DVD install disk

2. Buy an external backup drive. I got a Lacie d2 quadra 1 TB for 20,400 yen

3. Buy an internal drive. I got a Seagate 500 GB 5400 RPM drive for 9,990 yen

4. Buy Torx screwdriver set. Online I heard we need size 8, but the guy at the shop said size 9. I got both in a handy screwdriver handle with various tips inside.

5. Open and plug in the external drive. Your instructions may vary depending on the brand you got, which is a good thing because I'm about to wing it.

6. Format the drive according to apple support. I've got an intel based mac so I'll be using GUID

7. Make the backup drive bootable by restoring Leopard DVD to the drive

8. Restart the machine and press Alt during bootup to choose the DVD copied to your external drive. Make sure you can boot from that drive.

9. If not, stop reading this and seek professional support.

10. If so, do not install OS X! Choose your preferred language and then quit, either with Alt-Q, or from the top menu Mac OS X Installer -> Quit Mac OS X Installer. Reboot from original internal drive.

11. run Time Machine and backup the existing internal drive

12. Shut down your machine and remove the internal drive (subset of instructions from How to upgrade your MacBook's Hard Drive by MacInstruct)

13. See if you can boot from Time Machine backup

14. If not, shut down the machine and put your old internal drive back in and seek professional support.

15. If so, shut down the machine and insert the new internal drive and hope the rest of this continues to work.

16. Boot again from Time Machine backup.

17. Follow instructions from Restoring from Time Machine by James Duncan Davidson

18. Boot from new drive. Hooray!

10:25pm JST Wednesday 29 July 2009 (day 14371)

Okay, so the above is my plan. Here's how it all went down:

1. Found my Leopard DVD install. It was in the shed in a box labeled old electronic stuff.

2. Bought an external backup drive. I got a Lacie d2 quadra 1 TB for 20,400 yen

3. Bought an internal drive. I got a Seagate 500 GB 5400 RPM drive for 9,990 yen

4. Bought Torx screwdriver set. Online I heard we need size 8, but the guy at the shop said size 9. I got both in a handy screwdriver handle with various tips inside.

5. 10:27pm so far so good! I'm following the Lacie instructions and going through the whole setup process, formatting the drive as a 1000 GB single partition.

6. Bonus! OS X detected the drive and asked if I want to use Time Machine to do backups. I have actually cancelled that to make sure the drive is formatted GUID

   First, I moved to my internal HD the docs and utils from the Lacie installation. I deleted all the non Mac and non English stuff.

   Now running /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app and formatted the drive according to apple support. I've got an intel based mac so I used GUID, and formatted it as Mac OS X Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled)

   moved from the internal HD the docs and utils back to the Lacie drive

7. Made the backup drive bootable by restoring Leopard DVD to the drive:

   insert Leopard DVD

   Do not close the window that pops up

   Click Restore tab in Disk Utility

   drag Mac OS X Install DVD to Source

   drag LaCie (or whatever you called your formatted drive) to Destination

   click okay or start or something (I forgot what)

   wait 33 minutes.

8. Okay, this is where things start to get spooky, but we still should be okay for now. I'm going to shut down my machine (after uploading this file) and try to boot from the external drive.

   It worked! I chose English and then quit. Rebooted from original internal drive.

9. Now time to turn on Time Machine and backup the existing internal drive.

   System Preferences -> Time Machine -> ON

   In the top menu bar you can click a little icon to start the backup immediately. Mine failed at first, but then I reselected the backup drive. Now my backup is progressing.

   12:30am now as I start the backup. See ya tomorrow, computer, to continue this fun!

10. Good morning; it's 8:12am and I have hourly backups going back to 2:29am, so the original backup took 2 hours.

    Now shutting down my machine to replace the internal drive.

11. 9:47am, and now back up with my new drive, and my system is so much faster! Whoohooo!!

    Be sure to run Disk Utility first to create the partition on the new drive.

    Then Restore from Backup, and it works like magic.

Er, make that not like magic. Seems that I can't open Firefox or Flock now. Hmmmm. Spotlight is indexing things, but that shouldn't affect it... I stopped Time Machine's most recent backup; it was 500GB complete in backing up 50GB. Hmmm.

Well, Safari works, so I'm going to dl FF and Flock.

10:59am JST Thursday 30 July 2009 (day 14372)

downloading didn't help. But super thanks to Sha for this fix: Firefox fails after restoring via Time Machine!