71. Wedew Aysiku II:Dumb File’s Heist (The Sequel to The Curse of the Zlovel_4evr@yahoo.com)

Apparently there is no silver bullet for this problem. Heck, there ain’t even a bronze one. But the main thing is to have your files, at least once in your lifetime, tampered with by the virus, and you ending up angrier, sorrier and more desperate.

 

That was the as of yet not waned spirit of the Olympics.

 

Now somewhere down the line I have said that Easyrecovery may be the answer. But there are three computers in the lab and one of them (even though it does not have Easyrecovery installed) does the same thing as the computer (downstairs) which has Easyrecovery installed. What is this thing that these computers do? They display faded files whose names begin with Hid_ and are followed by the original names of the files that have been changed to 1 kb and with the right file size. The 1 kb files will still be there in their 1 kbness and brightness. The next thing to do will be open the faded files individually and save them onto a folder somewhere on the computer. The files will retain the Hid_, that is inconsequential and could be fixed the usual way, and regain their brightness and lose the 1 kb and get the right file size and are ready to be paraded into the world of files with new-found confidence and self-respect. Sounds like a cosmetics advert.

 

When all the files have been recovered that way, the flash can then be formatted and the files sent to it from the folder on the computer (not so safe from personal experience, the files may again be struck) or burned onto a CD. The files are finally ready to be seen on a computer that does show the hidden files.

 

The above is how my friends do it and what I have adopted as the best way of dealing with the scourge.

 

What is the exact basis for recovery? WONK T’NOD I. Turning on the “view hidden files” option alone may not be it because the other two computers in the lab and some more have been set this way but do not show hidden files. And there is nothing special in my view about the two computers on which I have witnessed with my four eyes files being salvaged from absolute and annoying nothingness into meaningful existence.  Except may be for their having Za Shitrino processors and the shiny “Recover ‘em like dat!” on their system units.

 

My advice to you:

 

-Have either the brains or the luck (like I had) to configure into recovery-mode or be in the presence of a computer that does recovery, respectively,

 

-Have the patience to carefully recover your files in case there is a shit load of them,

 

 

- Have the wisdom to choose between a flash, a CD or a combo, when taking the files for use on another computer.

 

I understand that luck is something not to be dwelled upon but to be shared with others. And I choose to share my luck with damsels in distress (from the virus) who happen to reside in Addis Ababa. I promise, no tiene nada que ver con losing anything. It is about recovery muchacha!

 

One

 

70. Asiregnawin amet bemasmelket

yemerkato arada

I met some of my old friends last night. I was surprised by how smart they have gotten in such a short time.

I’ll explain why. The first one bought a new watch. The watch was …..hmmm shall I say different? The watch is not a digital watch. It doesn’t have handes either. It has four columns of leds. The first column has six leds. Each led stands for one hour. The second column has another six leds, one hour each. So you got to count how many leds are turned on to tell the hour. The third column has four leds, each for 15 minutes. The fourth…..Come to think of it I’m not even sure if I got the number of columns and the denominations right. But you get the idea. You got some serious counting to do before you could tell the time.

!. Who the hell buys such a thing? To make things even worse, he bought it for 70 pounds which is about 140 dollars or 1400 birr. I couldn’t believe it. He even tells me he researched on different types of watch to get the best one! He is doing his PhD at the moment. Good luck with that! The “watch” comes with a metallic strap that makes the wearer look like he just escaped but couldn’t get one pair of the handcuff off. My friend likes it tough. I wondered what would happen if one of the leds failed. Specially the one in the first or second column. What can you tell about the time, well…uhh it is 10:00 plus or minus one hour! You got to press a button to “read the time”. The leds turn on for a very short time that you got to quickly finish the count. If time is up, you press again and hope you win the race this time.

Another friend of mine got his email password hacked by one of his former flat mates. “Come on, that is smart!” you might say. Well, what does a hacker do? Maybe they’ll read your mail. Maybe they’ll send an email from your account to your bank to get some cash in some way. This “hacker” got things right by sending an email. But what she didn’t get right was the content of the email. First of all, the email was a message sent to *her* friend not *the-owner-of-the-email’s* friend. Second, she signed her name at the end. You know like you write an email and at the end you put your name. This “hacker” put her own name there!

This is when things get even \ funnier. I found it to be a paradox that the hacker is smart enough to steal passwords but could send such a stupid message. So I asked my friend how she was able to steal his password. It appeared he used to lend his laptop to her. He keeps all his passwords on his laptop too! To make things more secure, the passwords were in a file named “Passwords.doc” on the desktop.

man yigdelachew? yemerkato arada.

69.LORD SAVE ME FOR I FEEL LIKE SHIT

68. Salam new?!

Girls are not normally interested in me.

 

Thursday I was with one of my friends from high school.  He is going abroad tonight so we had to meet one last time, for the first time in Lord knows how long.  And if you have not been informed of it, another mutual friend of ours from high school and college is about to join you-especially one of you.  Details I gladly can’t give you. 

 

Anywho, the first friend and I were discussing what else but girls.  He was providing seemingly simple strategy and I was listening intently, my main destruction coming from the girl that was sitting in front of us facing her guy. ..

 

We laughed, cried and said our goodbyes. While I was returning home, I bumped into another friend escorted by two chicks. Actually the girls were next to one another, but what the heck, I am sticking with the escorted story. Said hi to them in passing.

 

Yesterday the last friend calls and says and I quote and what a quote, “one of the girls from last time liked you and has asked me for your number”.

 

!!!

 

The first emotion I felt was pity: pity for the scores of poor girls that dug me but did not know my friend to ask for my number.  C est lavie!

 

After I was done with the collar popping, the brushing dirt off of my shoulders, the patting myself on the back, and the telling myself that pimpin’ ain’t easy ,reality struck with all its might.  I remembered how I was egiru lay wdeke silemnew to hook me up with someone.  Ok the last statement may be false, but my friend, noticing my plight as a good friend would, may have put in a good word for me.  Remember from Russell Peters about the goat that laid eggs? He might even have promised her “effort wasted on him –back” guarantee; here is the coupon, hold on to it tight!

 

Could not sleep for sometime last night owing to the exxxcitement. And the little time I slept, I dreamt of this girl clad in trailing  white, me standing next to her dressed in orange , a grand piano playing a rendition of locked up…

Speaking of Akon, he and T Pain are sure making hits like the factory!

 

And Mulatu Astatke, I have read that he is throwing big concerts In Europe and the states.  I visit allaboutjazz.com and there he was, his composition on top of the 200 most downloaded songs. He may after all be changing my childhood impression of him as that mildly weird guy who played that mildly mysterious instrument in ETv fillers.

 

Lies be unspoken, my excitement was mostly about how I was going to write this post. Beknownst to thee, behind most of my posts there is a woman or at least a thought thereof.  I have been having probably the driest spell of my blogging career and was even thinking of doing a greatest hits sort of thing. But out of nothing came post material that was hard to pass by and I am sitting here writing this when I should have been working on my thesis.

Yep I am still up on that shit!

 

Enter the instrumental of Still Dre

 

Since the last time you read from me

 

 -I read some books;well, hell, they ain’t many, A Hundred Years of Solitude, The Old Man and the Sea, Things Fall Apart ,The Kite Runner  and now it is  To Kill a Mocking Bird

 

- The power shifts were scrapped. Heaven knows how many women are walking around with “yechelemaw lijoch” inside them. Wait, that was harsh. Most of us are the fruits of the dark.

 

-They painted one building of the ministry of defence yellow, no reservations about the alicha simile there.  Next on the plans is drawings on the walls, in the tradition of the walls of   Wello Sefer : Por que miseria ? War,what is it good for ? etc

Meanwhile UNMEE is to withdraw from the buffer zone.  Yesterday, I was checking El País – I tries, hombre- and was hoping to read a story about Tirunesh. Instead, there was the story about Ethiopian soldiers shooting indiscriminately on Somali civilians and killing 38 people, after a convoy was hit by a bomb. No Al Jazeera involved this time. And given their previous performances at home soil, I would not fault them of not committing the act.

 

- Saw ekub translated as satellite bank

- Learnt that undertone meant overtone

 

-Tsehaye came out with a VCD named blene and his blens were not showing (he has his shades on)

 

-Thought I dropped my flash in a taxi and waited on two taxi stops, for an hour at one of them, hoping to see a kid woyala um sorry redat (gotta be politically correct  now) wearing a light green sweater  , and wasting a whole day in the process.  The wretched flash was chilling at home all that time.

I served as a redat this morning.  I made sure that two people got an extra five sent on their changes like we taking over!

 

Next stop-post 69.  Fittingly,  will try my horniest to   have something nasty for ye all.

 

One