'Cos you have a bad day...

Yeah. Bad day indeed. Or maybe, bad days.

First up on Sunday night my dad's macbook pro kernel panic-ed. No idea what happened. I googled and realised it could be cos of the thunderbolt update error in June/July… and since my dad hasn’t used his comp in quite a while it could be due to that update…. but after two days of attempting to fix it to no avail. Plus the comp seems to be running OS X 10.8.2. Which should have that thunderbolt driver update problem. So something else???

I tried using disk utility to verify and repair the disk, but it just tells me that it can't repair the disk. Tried to make an image with disk utility to back up the files… didn’t work! Tried to use terminal to copy the files to an external hard disk, but seems like the instructions given by others doesn’t work… as with the instructions on how to back up stuff in the single user mode. Man. I know i suck at using terminal and at linux commands (more like i have close to zero knowledge) but really…? 

So i gave up and tried to do a reinstall of the OS… tried it from recovery HD. And it tells me that it "Could not find installation information for this machine. Contact AppleCare."

Just great.

So i took a million years to re-dl Mountain Lion from the app store, and created a bootable start up USB stick… and tried again from there (disk utility still doesn’t work…). This time i could go past the user license agreement… but either the Macintosh HD was missing from the list of drives to install the OS in… OR the Macintosh HD was locked. Like WTF is happening man!

And i thought reinstalling the OS should be as easy as pie! 

I can't delete the whole drive cos while my dad doesn’t have anything really important there… he uses his mac for saving all his photos so yeah… i wanted to save a copy of his photo library!

So i decided to take a drastic step and try installing the OS on the external hard disk and using that to boot up the comp. Turns out that the 2TB external hard disk was in the wrong format or something and i can't install the OS on it… so i had to use the 500 GB hard disk my dad got for me… thank goodness i reformatted that for specific use with my mac (though it caused a lot of problems cos when i was on xp and desperately needed SPACE, i couldn’t copy anything to that hard disk cos of the format!). So yeah… i wasn’t sure if installing the OS on the disk will affect the data in it… so i decided to play it safe and back up all the data in that small disk into the bigger one… and that took ridiculously long… (all my arashi stuff were in the hard disk, and those were my ONLY copy…) When that was finally done, i installed the OS in the small hard disk and that took quite a while… it worked though… and via some disk changing using the recovery HD, i finally got my dad's comp to boot up from my hard disk. Problem was that i still could not fix the internal hard disk zzz. Cannot repair the hard disk, cannot reinstall OS cos it still says its locked. DLed and tried to reinstall the thunderbolt driver but it said the program was for OS 10.7.4 only and the OS i installed on the ext disk was 10.8.2 so it wouldn’t run. Goshhhhhhh! Tried to 'unlock' the mac HD but to no avail either. I'm really out of ideas now… At least with the ext hard disk OS boot up though, i could finally copy over my dad's photo library. Phew. After so long, could finally back up that thing.

Thankfully that comp is still under warranty till 25th of next month. I'm gonna give a last try tmr i guess… and if it doesn’t work i'll bring it down for repairs. Really at my wits end already.

 

And earlier tonight… 

The printer 'broke down' on me!

Gosh… 

My sister's A lvld are coming extremely close, so she's studying really hard and all… and also printing out quite a lot of stuff… all the answer sheets and all… so she was as usual going to print her stuff just now… when she complained about the black ink running out. So naturally, i refilled it for her. Then the trouble began. The printer kept complaining that the black cartridge was not installed. Even after i took out and put in the thing a million times! And got my hands black all over in the process...

My sis gave up and went to sleep after emailing me the files… while i tried everything i knew… soft switch off, hard switch off (literally just pulling the cable), even googled and found out how to enter the 'maintenance mode' which although cool, didn’t help at all. I even tore open a brand new cartridge to try but it just kept saying the black ink wasn’t installed. FINALLY i came across a website that said "With the full ink installed you might try plugging in power while you hold the stop key, sometimes the error is just locked and not cleared until you power up this way. "

Yup. So that was the whole bloody problem. The error message just got stuck and despite yanking out the cable and plugging it back, it didn’t clear up. Dang. All that mess just cos of this. Its been ages since i last got my hands dirty refilling the printer ink so boy am i pissed.

And my fingertips are still smarting from yanking and putting back the ink cartridge so many times. Sheesh! All cos the stupid error message was stuck in the system… Oh wells. At least that got fixed. Still… it took me over an hour to print out that few pages of stuff. Somehow sending the data to the printer took a million years. I have absolutely no idea what was wrong. The printer, or my computer? Or was it cos i was over working my computer or anything? I really had no idea. Sighz. At least my sis has her math answers now...

Oh wells. I still have my dad's mac to settle. I'll probably give it a last try before sending it down for repairs… its still under warranty so might as well...

 

Okays… time to sleep! Night night!

Photo Special - North Eastern Riverine Loop

Well… I have a confession to make. When I say photo special, it actually just means that i either 1) have nothing better to say so i'll just spam you with photos, 2) I'm too lazy to type anything or 3) a combination of the above two.

So here goes…!

Well i'll try and type a little more in this one...

1st… we went on a weekday. And it wasn’t a school holiday. So the loop was quite nice and empty :)

we reached there around… 8+? total distance cycled was like 22km or so… quite short only lah. Also, the place was really well done, very scenic and a lot of photo spots - so my dad happily took a bunch of photos with his new fujiflim X10. Was a VERY relaxed cycle. We cycled super slowly… we only finished at like… 12+pm. Well brunch included in between but still… a very slow cycle with plenty of photo stops.

Superb weather that day too… at 9+am it was still so breezy you'd think it was still 6am. In fact it was only at ard 11:30 that it started getting hot… 

we did go across the bridge to the lorong halus wetland place… but there's not much to see there on bikes… not unless you plan to ride the small rocky footpath… which i believe is meant for walking and not for bikes. In any case we didn’t and left the place pretty quickly. Oh there ARE toilets there tho so if you need a toilet break...

pretty pretty

This place is where you can choose to go to the punggol waterway park or continue on the loop to the punggol point park. I've been to the punggol point park before previously… and it was super cooling that day when we visited. Mainly cos it was on the verge of raining i guess? But the wind was so cooling it felt like we're in genting… 

So we headed straight on the loop to punggol point...

till we came to this. red rocky path ahead…. and we decided to turn back. my dad's colleague reports having a great time racing along that path… and THEN having a hell of a time cleaning all the bike chains of the little red rocks later on. So yeah… 3 bikes… wiping down my own bike was bad enough for me already… 

later on my sis said they rode that path during the night cycling thing before but her bike was okay… but then they were barely hitting 7 or 8km/hr so… i guess it really depends on how fast you ride… we were riding quite slowly that day tho.

but riding the punggol waterway was a great choice IMO. very beautiful. we wouldn’t have time to ride both places at the speed we went that day so… I'm glad we picked the waterway.

pity this pic was blur… but well i took it while riding so… :X

same, taken on a moving bike… can only do this when its bright enough...

no idea what this is… seems like its to open some gate… water gates? o.o

the 3 bikes… (sis was in sch). dad used the old folding bike this time

Yup… that's all the pics i took. We stopped for breakfast at macs at sengkang sports and recreation centre on the way back...

All in all… it was a very nice trip :)

Photos Special - Jurong Bird Park

Went Jurong Bird Park with my sis + her friend like… 2 weeks back or so...

Quite hard to take pictures of the birds with our small cannon cam… not good enough :(

looks like love birds eh? in actual fact they were fighting for food heh

we had lunch at bongo burgers outside the bird park, same day re-entry to the bird park is allowed. prices were still ok, like in the 15 bucks range… which is quite normal for the stuff served… i was quite surprised actually… was expecting some exorbitant prices considering that the vending machines sells drinks at 3bucks each… like 2-3x the prices sold elsewhere.

i ordered lamb burger… not that good though, the lamb was kinda…. overcooked IMO. too hard and dry.

and the world's tallest manmade water fall… like whee!

i think its damn cute when the birds use their beaks + claws to erm… move along the cage.

i think the greatest challenge in photo taking is the relatively low light conditions. low light = slower shutter speed = HIGH chance of blur photos.