I will be unavailable and completely off the grid from 8/26/08 to 9/2/08.

I will review your e-mail upon my return.

Bank of America decided to upgrade their ATMs in San Francisco with check scanners. In theory, that\’s great.

As a computer geek, obviously I wanted to try it.

In practice… \”Your check could not be processed. We are unable to return the document\”

If it\’s important to be processed today, find a lower tech ATM that still accepts sealed envelopes.

All too often I see the same scenario “I ran CHKDSK and now my data is corrupt”.

The wrong way

The hard disk is physically failing, and you let CHKDSK /R or CHKDSK /F run on it. Running CHKDSK on a failing hard drive is basically suicide for your data. CHKDSK is not a data recovery utility. It doesn’t behave like one. Data recovery utilities are cautious. If the sector is not readable, it will leave it be. CHKDSK will tenaciously retry until the data is not recoverable, mark the sector unrecoverable, and basically make my work a lot more difficult.

In summary, if your hard disk is failing, under no circumstances should you run CHKDSK on it. If Windows wants to run it, cancel it.

The correct way

A data recovery company, like yours truly, will take a disk image. On the PC, we typically use ddrescue. If the drive is too fragile for that utility, a specialty tool is pressed into service.

Once we have that image, we can do whatever we want with it. We can do it safely because we do not alter the original data. That means, that among other things, we can copy it, and run a CHKDSK on the copy of that image. If CHKDSK creates more problems than it solves, well, then we simply undo the damage by copying whatever useful result there was from this image, deleting it, and trying a different approach.

Why would we run CHKDSK in the first place, you might ask? Usually, we’ll run it if we are returning a bootable system to the customer. We want to ensure that it will function as it did pre-crash.

CHKDSK, when run on a healthy media, such as our lab virtual image drive, will correct NTFS errors that prevent Windows from starting.

So here I was at some forsaken mall at Cheesecake Factory.

While waiting for the order, I figured why not go check out what’s new at Hot Topic, which is one of my favorite stores.

I spotted a new CD by Judas Priest called “Nostradamus”, a double-CD release for $16.99. Now, that was cool. I haven’t bought a CD in who knows how long, but this I had to have. The cover advertised a free ticket to the show.

I looked at the back, and much to my surprise, there is a date on August 31, 2008 at Shoreline in Mountain View.

The pleasant surprises continued at the cash register. The CD was actually only $11.99.

As a result of a supremely boring dinner, I got a reason to block off my day for August 31 with my free ticket to see Judas Priest live!

The last time I saw them was Ozzfest 2004 where I was a sponsor VIP. They absolutely stole the show!

I am excited!

This is rather interesting.

All my life I\’d been testing as ENTP. Now that I finally figured out all my business strategies and began to successfully execute them, I\’ve become an ENTJ, according to this test.

That\’s rather fascinating because apparently as you move from having an employee\’s mindset to having a business owner\’s mindset, that changes the personality this much.

Hmm, however, I still feel that I am an ENTP.

I\’ll be looking into this for more insight when I find more time.

On the Internet, I am known as wiseleo on just about every system. Even my lovely car wears the \”Wise Leo\” license plate. In short, I am really not a modest person and make no attempt to conceal this fact. Whether it\’s a strength or a weakness depends on your perspective, with which I am fine regardless of your choice.

You can very quickly run your background check on me now. There will be a few thousand hits and most of them will be on me.

However, on this system wiseleo is owned by some lady. Rather than settling for wiseleo2, wiseleo_, wiseleo_k or some other unimaginable nonsense, I decided to crown myself king.

You are welcome to serve me.

Ordinarily, only about 1% of hard disks are affected by a motor seizure failure.

However, we see a trend where a large number of problems with external HDDs wind up with this very expensive problem. This is an abnormal trend and there is only one factor that significantly increases its likelihood of occurrence.

External hard disk spindle failure symptoms

If the motor inside the hard disk is not spinning and the drive was just tipped over, you just got one very expensive problem.

How can you tell if the disk is not spinning? If you hear an almost musical sound of 2 beeps and then the drive shuts down, then you probably got a spindle failure.

Usually, you’ll need to get the drive out of its enclosure to be able to listen to it properly.

Your data is probably safe

A motor seizure doesn’t actually cause data loss, in cases that I’d come across at the very least. It simply makes it very inconvenient to access that data. It’s frozen until the motor can be unfrozen.

How to prevent external HDD motor seizure

Fortunately, it’s simple to prevent.

Almost all cases begin with “My drive tipped over and… I need your help”

In order to avoid this really expensive repair, please do not run your external hard drives in vertical position. Lay them down, and your likelihood of encountering a spindle seizure will be significantly reduced.

Some disks look better than others when in horizontal position. I personally love Acomdata products. I do so for 3 reasons:

1. Aluminum case acts like a heatsink. Hard disks hate heat. The colder they are, the longer they live.
2. They look good and are stackable in horizontal position
3. They are very easy to open to use as a normal external enclosure. Only 2 philips screws and the whole case opens up.

Why is motor failure expensive to repair?

Here is what we need to do in terms of fluid bearings failure.

1. Open the disk and attempt to restart the motor
2. Obtain an identical disk to use as a donor model. As we purchase these from specialty sellers, any drive of any vintage will likely cost at least $200. That drive will be destroyed.
3. Perform platter transfer procedure. This takes about 4 hours due to extreme delicacy involved in the heads transfer process. The motor is built-in into the drive chassis to such an extent that it is impossible to replace without taking off the platters. At that point, one might as well simply transfer the platters and the system board to a known working drive chassis.

In summary, assuming the billable rate of $150/hr, you are looking at a $800-1000 bill for parts and labor. The recovery technicians really do have to do that much work in this case.

Data recovery is split about 80% logical issues, 15% electronics issues, 4% heads issue, and 1% motor failure. While 95% of issues are moderately easy to fix, the last 5 % is a genuine pain and specialty tools are required.

Motor failure is that 1% of issues that requires procedures normally performed in specialty “clean room” environment. Is a bona-fide clean room actually required? Not really, but during the head stack transfer procedure the drives are open for an extended period of time, so it helps to reduce any possible contamination. Heads failure is in the same category, but transferring just the heads is actually less hassle than transferring the platters is.

It takes specialized and expensive tools to perform this kind of work.

You will greatly reduce the risk of external hard disk drive failure if you simply use it horisontally.

Always have more than one backup! Keep at least one copy offsite, such as in a safety deposit box at your bank.

Keep copies of your most important documents and files on CDs and/or DVDs.

The fresher your profile, the more clicks you’ll get

Think about the last time you used a dating website. Who caught your attention? They were “Active users from the last 3 days”, right? The reason is because they are far more likely to respond to your message.

If you are serious about online dating, you need to actually be an active user.

How to achieve more profile clicks

Just login to the sites of your choice every other day or so, and you’ll automatically have more profile views.

You don’t have to run a search or do anything else. Simply signing into a site counts as activity. I would suggest checking your mail as well.

On the Internet, English majors win!

When you are in a nightclub or bar, you don’t know much about the person whom you are considering for a conversation. I am an excellent dancer (I am a VIP at a Salsa club) and a computer genius, but I don’t wear computer logo apparel to a nightclub very often. I am essentially competing vs. every other guy who is there for her attention. He can be a drug addict, a smoker, a construction worker, a CEO, an accountant, a criminal…

To me, that’s highly inefficient. I’d much rather be with someone who ignores every other guy.

On the Internet, I have a very clear advantage. I can establish my unique value proposition with the girl and then take her to my favorite night club. Once there, she has sufficient information about me to be disinterested in just about everyone else. This is how English majors win. I am not one, but my creative writing abilities are good enough.

Think about the last time you read a dating profile.

Now think about the last 50 of them…100…200…

How many of them can you remember?

A picture and a headline are there to get your profile viewed. We accomplished that, but now we have to keep the reader’s interest. We now face the problem that is commonly referred to as differentiating yourself from the competition.

I don’t care how hot a girl is if I ultimately can’t connect with her mind.

Many profiles are very brief, disorganized, and, frankly, uninteresting. I refer to them as generic. I don’t date generic girls.

Differentiating yourself from competition is hard enough in the business world, but there we only have to deal with a world of competing companies, which is traditionally not that complicated. If you do not have a business with a global application, it’s pretty easy to out-innovate local competition. Exception - ubiquitous businesses like nail salons. What do such ubiquitous businesses do to survive? They have two options - innovate or compete on price.

In marketing, the last thing we want to do is to compete solely on price. That leads into price wars…

Huh?! What?! Wrong site!!!…Or is it?

When you create a personal profile, you are launching a marketing campaign where you are the product. As you can’t compete on price, unless you are looking for some sugar, you have to differentiate yourself using only text and imagery.

Writing style

This is a formal document. Using IM-speak “im lookin’ 4 u” will not get you far. Write as if you were writing a love letter. You are telling the other person a story. A story that is designed to captivate his attention. This story needs to be powerful, engaging, and full of the “wow” factor. Read back your profile and see if it inspires yourself to write to yourself.

Spelling

Firefox has a built-in spell checker! Use it. If you can’t spell, you will get fewer responses. It’s really that simple. You must spell correctly.

Grammar

There are grammar errors in this article. Those of you who can spot them will likely ignore them because the content is compelling enough. Those of you who can’t spot them won’t care too much.

The same applies to your profile. You should strive to make it as grammatically correct as you can, but don’t get obsessed about it. I simply have better things to do.

Headline

I already wrote an article on that. Your headline should sum up the key points of your profile. This is hard to do.

Opening statement

Think of this as a sub-title to your headline. “Dear luscious hottie,” could be a fun start.

Length

If you can sum yourself up in fewer than 500 characters, you are either a genius at writing succinctly or did not tell me enough about yourself.

When I am reading your profile, you got me drawn in and hooked on the line. Now I want to learn more about you and to check against my compatibility requirements.

Longer profiles may actually result in fewer responses, but that is misleading. Many times I would be reading a girl’s profile and see some things that make us less than an ideal match. By figuring that out very early, I’ve avoided wasting our time. In sales, we refer to this as pre-qualifying leads. My time is extremely valuable and I prefer not to go on dates that have zero chance of being ideal for me long-term.

The devil is in the details - share your passions

Don’t tell me “I like motorcycles”. Tell me “I ride a Yamaha R1. Can you keep up?!”.

The first statement is generic and tells me that you may have a mild interest in motorcycles and won’t run away if I ask you to hop on the back on my bike. The second statement is aggressive and tells me that you have an acute interest in riding sport bikes.

If I were a bike rider, I would be far more inclined to respond to the second statement.

Instead of “I like music, movies, tv” say “I just went to see DJ Tiesto as San Francisco Civic Auditorium. The show was cool, but the lack of lasers due to Tiesto’s request was a bummer. Have you seen Beowulf in IMAX 3D?! Seeing Angelina Jolie rise up from the water in 3D literally inches from my nose was…drool-worthy. What did you think about the season finale of Nip/Tuck?”

You want to engage the reader in a conversation. A classic marketing technique is to make the prospect think about how they would use the product instead of whether they need it. If I am starting to plan a date with you while reading your profile, you got me initially sold and to close the deal you have to give me a compelling reason to choose you from an ocean of competition.

Good sales people will not say “Call me if you have any questions”. They will say “We can meet on Thursday at 3pm-5pm or Friday 2pm. Which works better for you?”. If the prospect is engaged enough to consider this meeting, they will check the schedule and suggest a mutually acceptable time.

When I ask a girl out, I don’t give her the option to say “no”. I give her a list of choices. She always has that option, of course, but I do not explicitly present it.

Give me give me more, give me more…

Your profile is starting to look more interesting. Congratulations!

Go through it again and see if you left anything explained as one word and look for any potential stigmas.

“I am a nerd” has a stigma…”World-class computer expert” is better, don’t you think? I was a conference speaker at Microsoft, so I think I can claim that!

Rewrite anything that is generic, dull, or makes a reader say “huh?”.

What life accomplishments have you achieved so far that can make you unique? I doubt you’ll find too many computer experts who are competitive dancers, for example.

Close the deal

An effective action statement should take the reader over the top. You want her to really want you by the time she’s done reading.

“Well, luscious, if you are intrigued enough, I’d love to a cancel a few appointments to meet you this week”.

Why bother?!

I get a lot of first contact e-mail. I wrote a fairly edgy profile, so some of them are downright straightforward. Let’s just say I got more than one offer to participate in a sexy photoshoot. Some were even more explicit. In other instances, I wrote a profile that was more mainstream.

The girls who write me tell me that my profile told them that I was a very interesting person. It stood out in their minds. “You just grabbed my attention” was one compliment, for example. “Let’s meet tonight!” was another. I think you can see a pattern.

My profile effectively attracts wild, highly intelligent girls and filters out generic ones. Isn’t that what you want?

Argh! This is too much work!

You certainly got that right! I would argue that most people who aren’t in the advertising, marketing, or other creative writing industry can’t write a compelling profile. If you can, you may want to consider a career in that line of work.

Marketing communications experts charge hundreds of dollars per hour because just one page of text can make billions of dollars in revenues for their clients. I am not exaggerating. I bill at less than $200/hr so far.

Wouldn’t you rather go on a date than spend days on writing?

As I am an entrepreneur, I am addressing that problem with a professional online dating profile writing and editing service.

The hotter you look, the more views you get

You’ve read my article on aspect ratios and know what size of the picture would be ideal for your profile. Now you are probably wondering how to get that one ideal picture taken to grab everyone’s attention.

There are two approaches to getting the pictures for your profile

Just about everyone uses the “OK, let’s have a look what pictures I have” strategy. They then look through all the pictures they have on the computer, find a few that are OK and use those.

Unless you have friends who are good photographers, that approach is sub-optimal at best. Most people can’t take a good picture. Moreover, they are typically taken in bad lighting and with focus on the ambiance rather than on you personally.

Taking pictures specifically for your profile is a much better idea

Overall, what you want is a good headshot. It’s not too difficult to get them done. All you need is a good digital camera, a thermonuclear source and some water vapor.

What?!

Sun and clouds…

There is a perfect article on creating killer headshots written by David Griffin. Read it. He’s an expert. He saved me a lot of time so I don’t have to write something like that from scratch.

While it’s certainly possible to take pictures like this with regular point&shoot cameras, a DSLR helps immensely.

I’ve used that article with great success. In fact, if you are booking a session with me, you won’t see lots of studio lighting gear. I just use my Rebel XT, my portrait lens, my cheap tripod, and whatever happens to look pretty as a background.

Self-portrait approach

A self-portrait should be your last resort. I had an emergency where I needed a headshot for a conference where I was speaking. It’s not my best by a long shot, but it worked for that purpose.

When you are doing portrait photography, you are going for a very shallow depth of field. That means you focus the viewer’s attention on the subject and blur out the background. You’ll notice that all pictures in print media and on the web are done that way. This is how we make the subject literally pop off the page.

Unfortunately, shallow depth of field requires very accurate focus. We normally focus on the subject’s eye. This is very tricky to do with a self-timer and manual focus. Bottom line: don’t try that at home. What normally is a 10-second job becomes a 1-hr ordeal.

Sharp focus is a double-edged sword. When the picture is sharp, it literally jumps off the page. However, all the flaws are also readily visible.

Have someone else take your picture for free

Find a friend with a DSLR and print out that article for him or her. You’ll have good results.

Alternatively, have a photographer take some pictures. There are many photographers who simply love taking pictures. Some of them want to transition into making it their business. In order to make money with photography, we need portfolios that showcase our work. Most commonly, we have an arrangement with the model that is referred to as TFP or TFCD. In such an arrangement, we take pictures of a model and give him or her a CD of the images in exchange for permission to use those images for our portfolios. TFCD stands for “trade time for CD” One place where you’ll find someone like that would be on Craigslist in the Talent Gigs section.

Pay someone to take your pictures

If you approach dating as personal marketing, it may make sense to invest into a professional photoshoot. After all most sites charge a fee to host your profile. Without good pictures, that tends to be a waste of time and money.

If you are local in the San Francisco Bay Area, I can snap a few shots for you. This will not be free.

The ethics of retouching

While it may be very tempting to perform a digital cosmetic surgery, I do not recommend doing that. I can easily create a what is referred to as “soft focus” image, but in the context of dating I am not sure I’d recommend using that. Such an image is what is commonly used in magazines. Compare the picture of the same celebrity in People magazine and in National Enquirer. I am sure you’ll see a big difference in her appearance.

Cleaning up the skin is easy and certainly should be done. Digital cosmetic surgery, on the other hand, will create an idealized image of you that may lead to disappointment in-person.

A hot headshot will get you more clicks. Take the time and do it right. The easiest way to test it is to post it on Hotornot.com and see what rating you will get.

Flash is bad! (Unless you are good)

Taking headshots with a flash typically has pretty bad consequences.  Basically, flash creates shadows that do not flatter the subject. That is precisely why I much prefer taking pictures in day light.

In order to take a good indoor picture with flash, we use diffusers, softboxes, and a whole bunch of other equipment. None of that is necessary with nice and soft day light.

Smile!

Model headshots are typically not smiling. If you have a good smile, show it. It shows friendliness. Some people actually should not be smiling, paradoxically enough.