Category Archives: Administrative

Administrative, Technology and Society

Windows Problems

10 Comments

Some readers may recall that my W2K machine died a couple months ago after an update (actually, it’s been over three months now). Well, a few days ago I finally found my install disk. Unfortunately, when I tried to use it to repair, it said it couldn’t find a Windows installation, so apparently the drive really got munged. I know all the data is there, because I mounted the drive on a Linux box and pulled it off, so I’m guessing that the boot sector is screwed up. Unfortunately, it’s a complicated situation, because it was actually set up to boot from Drive D (Drive C was a legacy 98 system, and both drives are partitions on a single drive). And of course, I don’t have a rescue disk, that I know of, for the current configuration.

So is it possible to go in and look at the boot sector in another machine and repair it manually? Anyone have any suggestions?

Administrative

Light Blogging

16 Comments

We’re going up to Michigan tonight for the weekend, for my nephew’s first communion. I may not even take a computer with me. Be back Monday afternoon.

[Friday night update]

We arrived safely, but things have been kind of hectic, including doing some nice handgun shooting practice in a gravel pit west of Ann Arbor this afternoon (0.22 long and short barrel, 0.380 and 44 Magnum). Visited with family late afternoon/evening, and more such festivities tomorrow and Sunday.

Be nice in comments. Don’t make me come in there…

Administrative, General, Technology and Society

Is There A .htaccess Doctor In The House?

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I just tried logging into one of my sites that I’ve password protected, and I stupidly used the wrong password multiple times. Now when I go to the site, I don’t get a username/password box. Instead, I just get a 403 error. Does the server somehow keep track of failed logins from a given IP and block it? If so, how do I fix it?

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, more clues. When I attempt to log in from my laptop, I get a username/password box, but when I correctly type in username/password, I get the same 403 error. This tells me there’s something going on with the server. Right?

One other bit of info. I can log in to other sites that use the same username/password, just not this one. Is it an Apache issue? If so, I’ll have to talk to support at my host. I don’t understand that, though, because it’s just for this one directory. It seems like a .htaccess problem, but I didn’t know that it would block an IP after a failed attempt, and I can’t find any info about how to unblock it.

[Wednesday morning update]

Well, it let me in this morning, so it must have had a time limit on the lock.

Administrative

Light And Scattered Posting

1 Comment

I’m actually working on this trip — in Torrance this morning, have to drive down to Seal Beach for lunch with an old Rockwell (now Boeing) colleague, then back up to El Segundo for a two o’clock meeting, then to Burbank this evening for Whittle’s half-century birthday. He didn’t look a day over forty-nine to me last night.

Then an early morning flight back to Florida in the morning, so probably not much new until Thursday. For those who read the New York Times, though, I may have some thoughts on North Korea there this afternoon. With a bonus picture.

Administrative, Space

Off To Phoenix

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I’m driving over from LA this morning, and hope to arrive in time for conference start. I’ll blog from there as possible.

Oh, and the title of my talk will be “Lies, Damned Lies, and Launch Costs.”

OK, I’m at the conference, listening to Henry Spencer describe the technical route from suborbit to orbit.

[Bumped]

Administrative, Space

In CA

1 Comment

I got into LA about 5 PM, and American managed to not lose my luggage this time. Henry Vanderbilt called me while I was grabbing some stuff at Trader Joe’s for dinner, and apparently I’m now scheduled to be a speaker tomorrow, if I can drive over to Phoenix in the morning sans incident. And think of something non-useless to say.

Actually, if Henry is reading this and wants to update the program, I’m going to talk about one of the most misunderstood and ignored (at least by the main aerospace establishment) topics that have kept us stuck on the planet — marginal costs.