Cape Girardeau History and Photos

July 19, 2014

Computer Is Still Oinked

We’re still fighting the computer issue. Since it was down, I took the opportunity to not set my alarm. I had to drain off some nitrogenous waste around 7:30, but I went back to bed and didn’t see daylight until 11:43 a.m. Except that it interferred with my mid-morning nap, I could get used to that.

Once I dug into the computer problem again, storm clouds started swirling. (Figurative storms clouds. These actual clouds were taken over Cadiz, Ky. in 2012).

Geeks were busy

Slaying my dragons would have been easy had I known what I was doing, but I was cautious because I didn’t want to mess up anything that wasn’t messed up in the process of solving Issue 1.

Kid Adam had been up all night doing a migration of his own, so he didn’t check in until he was groggily heading back home from the Miami data center. He suggested I put in two new 2-terabyte drives and do a restore from backyup, rather than rebuilding the mirror.

Kid Matt didn’t finish a 130-mile bike ride (actually 129.56 miles) until mid-afternoon, so he wasn’t in much of a mood to stop by, understandably.

I’m hoping Matt can swing by tomorrow, tell me that it’s OK to push this button and select this option without launching a palm tree or causing the shower to blow up.

Remember this big ball

Click on the big red Amazon button when you order stuff online. That helps me keep feeding hard drives into my computer and it doesn’t add anything to your cost.

July 19, 2014

My RAID Failed

Things were starting to come together for my trip back home. I wrapped up the final revision of the Smelterville book, got a haircut, the van got an oil change and new rear shocks, we went out to say goodbye to Grandsons Graham and Elliot, and I made a lot of progress pulling together a video this morning. I even worked in a well-deserved nap after all that activity.

Then, I looked down at the corner of my computer screen and saw an unusual scary-looking alert message. I think this email to Computer Geek Sons Matt and Adam will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about my travails. Bottom Line: I’m out of business until the Geeks parachute in.

HELP!!!

Got an alert this afternoon that my RAID 1 array had gone critical. That’s my boot drive.

I confirmed that my overnight backup had run and copied a few files I knew had changed over to the Drobo. Then I created an Acronis boot disk.

I loaded up the AMD RAID utility and confirmed that it WAS RAID 1 that was sick. My RAID 5 data drives were fine.

I went to Best Buy and picked up a new drive, just in case.

I told the utility to rebuild the mirror. It would crank awhile, then the computer would reboot.

I pulled what I thought was the drive attached to Port 2, which I thought was the bad drive, then I booted up the computer. It booted fine (much faster than usual, in fact).

There’s no joy in Steinhoffville

I went into the utility and confirmed that the drive in Port 2 was gone.

I put the new drive in, and got an error message telling me to tell it where it should boot from.

I tried Ctrl-F, Esc and F8 to get to a window that would let me do that, but no joy.

I pulled the new drive. Same result. I put the old drive back in. Same result.

I put the Acronis boot disk in the drive. It booted up with a bunch of data dumps and got me to a screen asking if I wanted to recover my computer. Rather than take a chance on screwing something up, I turned off the machine and typed this message.

Matt is getting up a 4 a.m. to ride 130 miles, so I don’t think he’s going to be of much help on Saturday. I’m getting ready to leave town, so I need to get fixed as quickly as possible. Am I overlooking something simple?

Remember the big Amazon button

Click on the big red Amazon button when you order stuff online. That helps me keep feeding hard drives into my computer and it doesn’t add anything to your cost.

July 18, 2014January 19, 2020

Rush Limbaugh’s House

Back in 2011, I picked up a Tour of Rush brochure from the Cape Convention Bureau in the H&H building. Using its guidance, I photographed Rush Limbaugh’s house, his church, the hospital where he was born, the chair where he shined shoes and the radio station where he launched his career. Then I forgot all about it.

Before I let Curator Jessica come to Cape ( she wanted to see if ANY of the stories I had told her about the area were true), I sent her a stack of reading material. It included a book on Louis Houck, a book on the Flood of 1927 and some other things. As an afterthought, I stuck in the Tour of Rush brochure.

Where’s Rush?

When I rediscovered the photos, I went digging for my Rush Tour pamphlet and couldn’t find it. Miz Jessica returned my other materials, but she must have been so enamored with Cape’s conservative megaphone that she couldn’t part with it.

So, it looks like I’ll have to make do with running Rush’s house at 412 North Sunset Blvd. until I can replace my reference material.

So far, I think I’ve only posted two Rush Limbaugh stories:

Rush and Koran-burner Terry Jones were both members of Central High School’s Class of 1969, and
Wife Lila’s uncle thought Rush was “a horse’s patootie” because he monopolized the CB radio after he got home from school every day.

July 17, 2014

Smelterville Rough Draft

Here are the first 15 pages of this year’s updated Smelterville Book. I’ve added some new photos and some interview snippets. I had hoped to revise the whole book, but I’ve run out of time.

These are draft pages. I have to have some folks look them over for typos (you are welcome to tell me if you spot anything that needs changing), then it goes to Son Matt for technical tweaking.

As you might notice, I’ve changed the title. This one picks up a quote from Clinton Wren calling the area “A community of love.”

Photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery. Again, these are working proofs at this point. I’ll have copies of the book at the Vine Street Reunion at the end of the month.