Category:Computers

All my computer activities

It’s Aliiiiiiive!

Posted on by isengaurdCategories:Computers, Life in General

Back from the dead even.

For a while, I wondered if I could bring it back. With hope, a lot of research, and about 4 consecutive 16 hour days, I have succeeded. I wound up finding a new theme; jumping into PHP with no experience and trying to recode a WordPress theme – yeah, no. Not a good idea. It would have been bad, very bad, awful. Probably for both me and my blog. While I will more than likely still learn to code, I think starting slow will be much better. I am settling for learning to document API’s for now. It is in line with my career and will add a huge branch to my skill set tree. Plus there is the added advantage of learning some code along the way. I am already familiar with enterprise infrastructure and how to document that, so hopefully this will fit into the patchwork of my multiple careers.

I am currently job hunting. Abrupt layoffs, cancelled or completed contracts, and downsizing are occupational hazards in my line of work. So is the financial hardship brought about by these events. I’m tired of never knowing when stuff like this will happen, so I am also taking steps to alleviate my insecurities. Hopefully in the next few month I will have a new website up and running to make this happen. This endeavor will take time and be labor intensive, need a real project plan, and more than one person. I have a retired husband who can help with that. I hope. He won’t stick to it if he isn’t interested, but the possible financial impact to our checking account should be a major motivator. We have run a business together before, and were very successful. I will post more on this later.

 

InCoding

Posted on Updated on by isengaurdCategories:Computers

After much research and a lot of eyestrain, I have found that it is not my current host that is the problem with my blog. My WordPress template is old. Like as in 2003 old. Too old to deal with the newest version of PHP old. Almost everything in the code has been deprecated, restructured, or flat out deleted in the latest PHP standard. Most of the syntax needs to be updated to meet with the new PHP 7.4 functional requirements. And there is a lot of code.

I don’t code.

It isn’t that I don’t know how (I don’t, but that’s not the point,) it’s that I have no desire to code. The last time I did anything with code was Autolisp (a custom version of Lisp created by Auto Desk for use with Auto CAD.) Lisp stands for Lost in Stupid Parentheses. Pretty much sums up how I feel about code. One of my sons knows how to write software code in at least 5 languages. He goes in his room, closes the door, we hear several hours of hairburning profanity, banging, pounding, minor explosions, seeing smoke and flashing lights come out from under the door, and boom! Code. Black magic f*ckery, I tell you. Has to be.

The developer has abandoned the theme. Bummer. Sooo, I guess I am going to learn to code in PHP. Why not. I can learn anything. Coding has never interested me, but if I want to keep my very customized theme, sacrifices must be made. I imagine my next few posts will be me serving up my time, sanity, emotional stability…

Pray for me.

Finally!

Posted on Updated on by isengaurdCategories:Computers

After four years, I have my blog back. Yay me. I have the text and the content, but there is nothing like hosting your own and customizing it. And I had done much customization. Not just the background and pictures, but Google fonts, CSS changes, PHP changes, customization of the theme, just all kinds of things.

Then the lady hosting it closed her site in 2017. I could have migrated my site at that time, but I don’t check that email address very often. And when I went to make an update, it was gone. I still had her email address, and lucky for me, she had backed it up. She sent me the back up database. Unfortunately, that’s just the posts, pages and comments. All of my customization was gone. Honestly, I can rebuild that, and it was time to; I hadn’t changed the theme in 8 yrs. Right now, I’m just happy all of my content was saved. There are many things here that I have nowhere else.

If I have my own domain and hosting, what am I doing here, you ask? Well, it turns out my host doesn’t support the latest version of WordPress. Something to do with a PHP package extension, or some such. I’m going to open a ticket with my host and see if I can get it resolved. But, until then, here I am.

Glad to be back.

I have met you, EFS, and I have PWNED!!

Posted on by isengaurdCategories:Computers, Life in General, Windows

I did it. I found a way to recover files encrypted by Windows XP encryption after a reinstall of the OS, and no encryption keys. Out of ignorance, I encrypted some directories that I wanted to keep private, but didn’t know about the export key thing. Then I got hit hard by a viral infection. The amount of time to remove it versus the time it would take to reinstall was ridiculous. So there went my file access, even though the username and password was the same. After a year of research and frustration, I have my files back. I won’t go into detail about how Windows goes about encrypting the files, but let it suffice to say that through a series of fortunate accidents, I succeeded. But there are a few catches. Catch #1: Physical access. You must have the drive in hand. If you don’t have physical access, you can pretty much forget it. Catch #2: You must buy software. I used a deleted file detector and was able to recover all of my files by directory. Catch #3: You cannot have used any scrubber software. What that means, is if you used a secure deletion program, this method won’t work. For the most part, if you are tech-savvy enough to be using one of these programs, chances are, you are tech-savvy enough to know better than to encrypt without exporting the keys to begin with, if you even bother to use
Windows encryption rather than a more secure option. If you meet these criteria, plug the drive in as a slave, power up, run the deleted file recovery program, and enjoy your files. A word of caution though – this is a VERY time consuming process. so you may want to do this on a spare pc. Also, sorting through all the files that you have deleted on the disk… Got a couple of days off? It took me a week of evenings after work and one solid – 16 hrs per day solid – weekend to finish. But I got my files back. 🙂 I should also note that you should never ever try to save the recovered files to the same drive you are recovering from. You may actually overwrite what you want back. Best bet? Use a spare drive or go get a second one. Happy filing! :woo: