What's Your Problem Today?

[Dorsetmike]

Since my dear wife passed on in July I feel less and less like doing anything apart from sitting at the computer. Apart from you lovely people out there on this and other forums I get very little human contact, shopping once a week or so, I get to talk to checkout operators (wow) step daughter phones once or twice a week, her brother maybe once a month, my own 4 kids hardly ever. (Unless they want something!!)

I will spend Christmas day with step daughter, her husband and baby, I may have a couple of friends from a photo forum visit for a couple of days after, so weather permitting we can get out.

I have a 3 bedroom house which I can't sell, at least until July 2009 if then. I use 3 rooms, (5 if you count kitchen and bathroom) still have to heat and clean all the others.

I have 2 cars, trying to sell one since August, one offer of 1/3rd of its value!

I'd like someone to share the house, help pay the mortgage, but who wants to live with a 74 year old widower? OK I can cook, and do laundry and cleaning, case of having to anyway!!

Thank you all out there for your online company and a merry Christmas to all

 

[marval]

Hi Mike,

I am sorry that you have not had a good year. I can only hope that next year will be a better one for you. Glad that you get comfort out of talking on forums, we do our best to keep people cheerful.

A merry Christmas to you too.

 

[greatcyber]

Hello Mike,

I can hear the pain in your words and for that, I'm so sorry. Children can be thoughtless as parents age, that's why I make it a point to speak with my mom in the states or email every day (or several times a day).

You might be surprised, but I'd bet there is someone else out there who is in exactly the same boat as you who might just LOVE to have you as a room-mate. Maybe check with some agency for seniors (I don't know what kind you have there) but you might even consider being a volunteer at doing something you would enjoy. In the states, they have SCORE (Senior Corps (?) of Retired Executives who offer help for free to people and act as mentors, etc.

In any event, stay positive. Next year can bring new promise!

You know, my mom is starting to feel like she "is on her way out" but she did manage to write and publish a novel at 74. She's 79 now and is involved with a writing group. There wasn't one in her area, so she started one. Now it is one of the most successful ones in Florida and last year she won the President's Award for what she has managed to do.

So, never count yourself out.

 

[C5Says]

@stephen, that is such a great idea your mom did!
@mike, maybe you can think of something...what do you like doing? from that we can have some brainstorming to solve your problem...

 

[Tûrwethiel]

Hello Mike

My thoughts are with you, especially after such a terrible loss. How lovely to have step-kids and their children to love you over Christmas.

Hang in there - you do have forum buddies who care.

Cheers

Vicki

PS: it was very brave of you to tell us all about yourself.

 

[Contratrombone64]

Dear Mike

Your story made me weep. I feel you pain your poor man.

I'm off to midnight mass at Christ Church St. Laurance, in Sydney, tonight and I'll hold you in my prayers.

with love

David.

 

[Krummhorn]

Mike,

Thank your for sharing this terrible life event with your friends here. You know by now that this is a very supportive forum community - we are more than mere anonymous names ... there are real people behind those names, people that care about you and one another here.

I do hope that you can find some Christmas cheer despite all that has transpired. Good that you are spending some time with family, too.

 

[greatcyber]

Just found out that the Seagate 7200 1 Terrabyte drive that I purchased less than 3 months ago for storage of multi-media and backups has a known firmware problem that causes the disk to one day magically disappear. Can't be detected in any computer, either as external or internal. Now that I have 700 Gigs on it, it is going to be a real "treat" trying to get the data off of it. Seagate apparently has known about the issue for over a year, yet they do not take it off the market until a patch is developed. Their service department will replace the drive with another drive (that has the same problem) and you have to wait until you get a replacement. DON'T GET THE BARRACUDA series from Seagate...fair warning...until they have the firmware fixed. The drive was produced in Taiwan. Seagate has always been a provided of good products, but this is an acception.

When doing research, their own forums are FULL of complaints about this line with everyone having the same issue. Some drives fail after only a couple of weeks. It's just a waiting game. Service tags are not being answered from months ago.

So, this morning we spoke with a manager at Seagate and brought this to his attention and he is replacing the drive with a more expensive model for free. But we still have the problem of finding a way to get the data retrieved. Aside from software, there are over 2,000 photos on that drive and something like 30 gigs of music. We put over 500 CDs on there and sold the CDs to save space. Luckily, the pics and music are on another drive, but still.

Seagate says, "you should make a back up frequently." Duh, that would be the purpose of having an external 1 terrabyte drive, to back up my 200 gig HD on my laptop.

Sometimes I just hate computers!

 

[Dorsetmike]

Stephen, there is some software about that will retrieve data also some companies that specialise in data retrieval, have you tried any of those? We had a drive crash about a year ago, a Chinese language student who was staying with us managed to retrieve the majority of our data, took him two or three evenings though.

I've now got two identical PCs networked, both with external drives, all the pictures, music and documents are shared and backed up; not so worried about applications as I have all the discs for those.

 

[greatcyber]

Hi Mike,

Yes, I have several data retrieval packages, but the problem is that the drives are not even being seen by the bios of the computer. We took the drive to a computer store today but they didn't have any of the same drives. They recommended that I take it back to the shop where I purchased it after the holidays and see if they can take the back panel (with the firmware on it) off of the drive and then put it onto my old drive. That might make the difference and then I could transfer all the data onto the new drive. Seagate is going to replace the Barracuda with a Maxter. I read that they also have some issues, but nothing so rampant as with the Barracuda series.

I am also getting an additional terrabyte drive to use only as a backup, but that will most likely be a western digital as we have never had a problem with those.

The manager at Seagate said he would try and push the manufacturer for a patch post haste as now the customers on their forum as so p-ed off that they are starting to post in forums all over the web telling of their horror stories and the lack of response from Seagate. That's how the IBM Deskstar ended IBM's selling of that product and it was acquired by Toshiba.

If they don't want to Completely Ruin their reputation, they'd better do something pretty fast as most people can't and/or don't want to wait months to access their data.