Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with moron

The Day The Music Died...Hopefully.

iconomy — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:29:41 -0800

Every five minutes my computer makes a pretty sound. Why? Ever since last night, my computer makes a short but melodious sound every five minutes. I haven't changed any settings that I'm aware of (I don't even know how to set up an alert/timer and don't know if it's even possible), and have run 2 virus programs. I've rebooted and it's still there. It sounds like someone very quickly and lightly running their hand over the keys of a toy piano. I have a pc running XP. I have nothing running in the background and only one browser window open. Any ideas as to what it might be or where I could look to investigate?

When iDiots, iMmersion and iPhones collide, the iDiot needs help.

nevercalm — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 13:59:17 -0800

Iphone 3GS+Water=Unhappiness. Can I reactivate my 1st gen iphone while the 3GS is sitting in a bowl of rice for the next few days? So my iphone wound up immersed in water. I immediately dried it off, popped out the SIM card, got as much water out of that slot as well as anywhere else I could find it, and then covered it in rice.

I still have my 1st gen iphone. Can I reactivate it and use it while I'm waiting to see if I'm about to be several hundred dollars poorer 5 days from now? What would the re-re-activation process be should the 3GS (fingers crossed, hopinghoping) work again?

These questions as well as any further advice/anecdotal info (experiences replacing phones with water damage, how long I should wait, etcetc) would be much appreciated!

Moron doesn' back up files

generic230 — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 21:24:53 -0800

Crap! I just lost ten years of writing by accident. No, it wasn't backed up. I'm a fucking moron. What happened was I accidentally renamed the documents folder while I was trying to rename another document (I was changing the extension to .xls). But, somehow, it renamed the documents folder. When I tried to rename it back to Documents, it wouldn't let me. It said, "You can't change the name of this" Which is fucked, because, it let me do it before.

Anyway, just now, my computer froze and I had to shut it off. When I turned it back on, the xls was gone and the DOCUMENTS folder was back and all my documents were gone. All of them. How do I recover them? Did my powerbook delete all those files just because it shut down? Help, I'm sick over this. I know, I should back up, I didn't. I have some the documents somewhere on various cds, but most of them I don't have backed up anywhere. What do I do?

OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod

Moondoggie — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 16:31:55 -0800

Miracle Filter: I'm trying to make sure I've covered all of my options and while I hope that this hasn't happened to you, I secretly hope it happened to someone. My hard drive is dead. Well, not exactly the whole drive. One partition of an external firewire drive. I'm on Mac OSX and first went to TechToolPro and Disk Warrior. They tell me I used to have 72GB there. They can rebuild the directory to see 26GB. Insert cursing.

I called Drive Savers for an estimate. Using the Economy delivery service, the charge would be from $500 to $2700. $500 if they recovered 10%, $2700 if they recover it all. Insert fainting.

My latest crackpot scheme is forensic software. I have an email in to a place that sells it to see if I can download a demo to see if it works. Pricey, but not 2700 frickin' dollars. Insert hope.

My question (finally) is: have any of you gone through this hell and retrieved all or most of your data, and if so, was it by using a method I'm not thinking of. Oh, I tried going in through the UNIX on a whim and that didn't work either.

Yes, I'll backup my data from now on and so should you. Do it NOW! Well, after you've answered, at least.