Going well

 So far this year....

We replaced all the carpeting on the main floor (3 Bedrooms and Living room).  While we were at it we chose to paint the bedrooms, which also gave me the opportunity to finish the molding in those rooms.

Built a bed for my youngest, it opens up from the side... he loves it.  Now my wife would like me to build us a new one.  I've designed it but haven't decided what wood to use it.

Got a promotion.  That was pretty cool.  Been talking to my leader(s) for about 5 years on that.  Fortunately I've had a bunch of opportunities to shine this year and my leader's boss took notice and agreed it was time to promote me.  Nothing has really changed yet, but there are several things coming up that I will most likely have to take point on.  Should be interesting and looking forward to the challenge.

Broke my finger a few weeks ago.  That sux.  I still have about 5 more weeks to wear the splint.  Makes typing pretty difficult :) (also a reason why I haven't started building our bed)

Donated one of our cars to Rawhide.  It was pretty emotional because we had the car for 19 years and it took us a LOT of places.  My oldest had been driving it for the last several years and it was starting to become a money pit so definitely time for it to go.  But still...

Built a fire pit in the back yard.  Just got a Menards kit, but we chose to use multiple colors.  Turned out great and works really well.

Installed a hitch on our car.  The car we donated had the hitch so we had to put one on the "newer" car.  Pretty easy install.  Lower the exhaust, bolt it on.  Done.

Finished the landscaping... we now have rock all the way around the house.

Got rid of the raised planting beds.  We just hadn't been using them and they took up way too much space.

Picked up an Energy Dome.  Can't believe I waited this long to get one.  Have an interesting idea to add lights to it... might actually look into that.  I tend to wear it while working just for fun.

Celebrated 30 years... thats pretty awesome.

Really blessed with a great partner, awesome kids and a good job.

Underwhelmed

 It was supposed to be great. It was supposed to be awesome. But reality isn't even close. 

SSDD, I'll just keep doing what I do and being super awesome at it. 

Ancient Backup Files Part 3

If you look back, you'll see I've mentioned some backup files that I've had laying around for a long time.  I had taken some backups of my Dos / Windows hard drives circa 1995 to tape, then DD'd the tapes to a Linux box circa 2002 and just grabbed the files.  I can't remember what software I used to create the backups, but I always assumed it was Norton Desktop.

Yesterday while I was wandering the internet I came across a mention of Central Point Backup.  I seem to recall having that at one point too so maybe that is what I used.

I did find a github project that talks about that format here https://github.com/RetroReversing/retroReversing/blob/master/tools/CentralPointBackupVisualizer.html#L31 and at some point I'll compare my notes with what that project says.  I just wanted to record it here so I wouldn't lose it :)

Someday I hope to create a program to read the files and extract the files in them to see if there is anything of importance in there (BBS System files I hope!).

Berkeley System's After Dark

Years ago, in the Windows 3.1 & 95 era there was a company called Berkeley Systems that had a screen saver.  Their most famous one was the Flying Toasters.  I personally liked the Looney Tune ones.  I had a few of their separate packages, Star Trek TNG, Simpsons, Games and others that I can't remember.

I did create a couple of AD modules but nothing super exciting.

One thing I'd really like to be able to do is strip the graphics out of the modules, however, I still haven't been able to find a way to do it.  The resource pullers that I've tried just don't seem to be able to identify them... one of these days I will try to dig though the programs again.

Every once in a while I'd poke at the install zip files but always found they were protected with a password.  I was never able to find one on the internet and I didn't have a zip password cracker so I just ignored it for a while.  I had a copy of my old "install" folder so I always just used that to poke around when I felt like it

Yesterday, I decided to poke some more and as I was browsing one the of install files (install.ins) I noticed text near the list of zip files that said "striketeam" and I thought, that's an odd phrase to be in there.  So I tried that as the password on one of the zip files and it worked.  Cool!

I am having an issue finding my other install disks, however, I did find the Simpsons install disks and it used the same password.

Now if I could just figure out how to pull the graphics... and sound would be nice too.  When poking through the module files, I see "CSTM" in multiple places like various resource files.  I would swear that was some kind of music / sound format but I can't find anything online that really talks about it much and I just can't remember that far back (almost 30 years!).

Ah well... at least I figured out the zip password, give me hope that I'll figure out the other stuff too.