I have a large VirtualBox VM on an external HDD. The HDD fails the S.M.A.R.T. test. The VM still works fine, but any regular attempt to copy the VM files over to a healthy drive fails ... there is clearly already something corrupt in the VM's virtual HDD, although it is not (apparently? yet?) affecting the functionality of the actual VM.

Any suggestions on how to save the VM? Linux Mint Guest OS, Pop_OS (Ubuntu) Host. The VM is nearly 800 GB. Both regular copy and rsync fail.

Thanks,
Eric

PS: (and perhaps I should have led with this, but...) is it okay to ask these kinds of specific, technical, "help me with my tech-stuff" questions here on Tildes?

Update to the update ... moved update info into a comment ... will keep my progress updated in that primary comment.

Danke, y gracias to all

I’m a bit tipsy, but I sincerely mean this to you all:

I wish you a prosperous year and decade. This site has been an encouraging sign the last year - May it last ever on!

I wish a peaceful and prosperous new year on all :)

Happy 2020 Tildes people! Here's to good health, personal growth, and much success to each and all of you in the new year. It's always a good time to remember we have the power to shape our lives however we want them to be. Peace and blessings.

Asked in the spirit of the new decade.

I am 14, so mostly growing up and realizing that the world is probably going to enter a recession when I reach adulthood which will suck for reaching financial independence.

Going through puberty, even if it's just the beginning of it and seeing one of my cats die from kidney failure and hearing that my grandma died from cancer, which is very sad :(

I recently bought a product online. I wasn't able to find it in a bricks-and-mortar shop, so I had to buy it online to even see it, let alone try it. I received it, and it wasn't right for me. I was able to exchange it for a different version, but even the different version wasn't right. So I returned the product and got a refund. All along, the customer service was excellent, but the product itself turned out not to be what I wanted.

The way the product failed for me was connected to the "headline" description of the product. It wasn't a minor failure. It did something that they explicitly said it wouldn't do, which was one of the main selling features of the product.

After the dust settled, I wrote a review of the product. I don't normally do this: I neither write nor read reviews. However, I know that other people do rely on reviews and, seeing as this product is only available online, and its failure was linked to a major selling feature of the product, I felt duty-bound to inform other prospective buyers that it might not suit some people. I gave it a 2-star (out of 5) rating, as well as writing up why it didn't suit me (while allowing that it might still suit other people).

Since I submitted the review, I have checked the website (I'm an egotist: I wanted to see my words being published!). Other reviews with more recent timestamps have appeared, but my review has not appeared. I've now noticed that the lowest rating in their reviews is a single 3-star rating, with some 4-star reviews and lots of 5-star reviews. There are no 2-star or 1-star reviews. My only conclusion is that the company selects which reviews to publish - and which ones not to publish.

I've always wondered if companies would post negative reviews of their own products. Now I know for sure that at least one company does not.

I played VA-11 HALL-A quite a while ago and recently played ROM 2064. Both have similar aesthetics, sound, themes although they have different mechanics. I really liked how ROM had voice acting too which is a shame to say is not the case of VA-11 HALL-A but I still quite enjoyed both. 2064 perhaps more since it felt more engaged but perhaps that's just memory tricking me.

I know there's N1RV Ann-A and ROM Neurodriver coming in 2020 but well, after that, I'll still have nothing so, what games have you played which are similar?

PS : Have a happy new year and hope I've not posted in the wrong place, I'm not sure if it would've fit in the recurring topic.

I'd be interested in a feature where I can have a list of top-level domains that I want to ignore content from. For example, I'm never in a position to watch a video when I'm browsing tildes. So I'd like the option to just not see any link to youtube.com or vimeo.com. Maybe I think all content posted to example.com is inflammatory click-bait, so I just want to ignore those links, too.

Would that be possible?

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Some days ago I came back home to visit my parents during these holidays.

Yesterday evening, while we were watching a movie, nature called and I had to go to the bathroom. Because I'm a lazy bozo and it is closer to the living room, I did what no man should ever do - I used my parents' bathroom.

Stumbling in the dark in this unfamiliar place I had no right being in, I clumsily bumped on the towel rack (an old 80s coat hanger looking thing) and to my horror, managed to snap one of its plastic arms off.

Because it's a relic of its time, and perhaps because the bathroom is a sacred personal space which should never be altered if not for strictly necessary reasons, mom and pops were upset.

I felt like shit, an outcast whose madness lead an entire family to despair and misfortune while trying to save himself literally a handful of pitiful steps.

But a shining beacon of hope came from a fading memory, one which sounded utterly absurd, yet in times of desperation still came out as somehow plausible.

"Just use baking soda and Loctite forehead"; this had been uttered from a German friend of mine while he had been admiring the broken mess that is my duct taped ps4 controller some time ago. Was it a joke? Was it a serious suggestion? German humor is often lost in translation...

Still, I had to give it a go. I had to try something. And this morning an attempt was made.

I'm still feeling ecstatic. Never have I hever felt this good about a DIY tryout. I can confirm that baking soda is an incredible catalyst for super glue; the result while somewhat sloppy-looking is rock solid.

Pops couldn't believe his eyes when he saw his good ol' towel rack hanger thing stoically standing where it always did, in its rightful place, with no defects at all.

Thank you baking soda and super glue, you saved Christmas.

To all of you whose plastics need some fixing, remember this combo and give it a go - it will save you as well.

Any other similar hacks that you might want to share are very much appreciated.

TL;DR
Baking soda and regular superglue are incredible for fixing plastics.

Edit: forgot to put tags in post. Apologies.

Here's a little setup I'm going to try out with my reading habits this year. I figured I'd share the idea, in case anyone else is interested in running it (or something similar) for themselves.

Rules

• I must complete one book for each letter of the English alphabet (26 total).
• A book fulfills a letter by having the title or any part of the author's name start with that letter.
• I do not have to go in alphabetical order.
• I CAN rearrange entries at will.

Example

I realize that's hard to visualize, so here's how the first few letters might look once completed (these books are placeholders):

A: Jeff VanderMeer - Annihilation
B: Tina Fey - Bossypants
C: Arthur C. Clarke - Rendezvous with Rama
D: Dava Sobel - Longitude

Explanations/Clarifications

Let's say the first book I read is Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five. I could have that count for K (Kurt), V (Vonnegut), or S (Slaughterhouse).

I'm choosing to ignore articles in titles. The Martian would thus count for M (Martian) rather than T (The).

If an author has a single name (e.g. Voltaire), I can only use that one letter (V). If an author commonly uses more than first and last names (e.g. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Hunter S. Thompson), I can use any parts (C N or A, and H S or T, respectively).

If the book title is/begins with a number or symbol, I can count it under the letter that corresponds to the name/pronunciation of the number or symbol (e.g. 1984 would be N (Nineteen) while 1Q84 would be O (One)).

As the process goes on and more letters get filled, my choices will get narrower. I am allowed to swap around books in order to accommodate new choices, but only within the parameters of the rules above. So if I initially had Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five down for S but then I decide to read Stanley Schmidt's The Sins of the Fathers, I can move Slaughterhouse-Five to V for Vonnegut since Sins can only work for S.

Purpose

I came up with this for a couple of reasons:

• It's a semi-fun way to jazz up my regular reading habits.
• It gives me a goal to work towards.
• It will help me narrow down choices from my immense backlog and interest list, especially when I have only a few spots left to fill.
• It's free-form enough that I don't feel boxed-in, but it's restrictive enough that it'll likely force me to read some stuff I wouldn't usually choose.
• 26 books for 26 letters is coincidentally perfect for an average of one book every two weeks, which feels like the right pace for me.

Process Note

I'm only going to count books I read with my eyes rather than books I listen to. This isn't because I have anything against audiobooks (I love them!) but because I've actually gotten TOO dependent on them and am not sitting down to read books like I used to. I'm hoping this can restart my reading habit. I put this here rather than in the rules because I don't want to restrict anyone else should they choose to do this exercise.

I plan to post updates on my "alphabet progress" in the scheduled "What are you reading these days?" threads.

Anyway, feel free to share your thoughts on this process. This is entirely theory-based at the moment, as I've never actually attempted it, so if there's anything I've failed to account for or any potential hiccups you see, let me know.

Also, if you're wanting to steal the idea, whether wholesale or in part, go for it! It is ripe for modding or tweaking. I'm considering doing a second, separate alphabet for myself that's limited only to graphic novels, for example. I also think it would be neat for people to do it in other alphabets, in languages other than English.

Furthermore, it's a generic enough setup that you could do it for more than just reading too. You could use the ruleset as written with music (using artist and album names) or movies (using titles and directors). Games are a bit tougher since you really only have the title to work with (since there's often not an identifiable "author"), but with some tweaks I think it could still happen.

I'm sitting here eating a pan crust pizza with pepperoni, sausage, mozzarella+romano cheese, and easy mushroom and basil. I feel that this is an ideal pizza with it's mixture of crunch, spices, and sweetness. The leftovers are perfect for reheating in a skillet the next day. The crust has softened but is soaked with enough grease that the skillet makes the crust have an almost puff pastry style crunch/crumble. This is probably my ideal pizza.

So my friend has a computer she put together, and after replacing what feels like every single part on the rig, multiple trips to the repair shop, and calling a priest wrestling the demons out of it, it is randomly cutting power and we think the replacement power supply might be just as busted as the last one. Are there decent odds of that being an issue, or could it be something that we are overlooking?

EDIT: So, I had a car issue pop up and I won't be able to to take a look at at it tonight. Will download the tools you all mentioned to a jump drive and will keep you posted.

Was there, stayed up the whole time. Really thinking it might be a bad power switch that stuck, so it would turn off randomly. Thanks for all your help.

FINAL EDIT: So I narrowed it down to the Graphics Card and/or the Cooling System. Running the Heaven Benchmark on Extreme pretty reliably cleans it's clock, especially turning it off and then turning it on again. This happens on the latest Windows Updates, with latest Nvidia Drivers. (RTX 2080) Pulling the card and running the benchmark anyway causes the same issue, and this time it powered on and then back off in a loop. CPU-Z stress caused it to crash, so I'm assuming it's the cooler. Thanks again.

This topic is part of a weekly series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss their week.

If you have any plans, goals, accomplishments, or even failures, whether they be personal or work related, I'd love to hear about them. This is a place for casual discussion about your week, past, present, and future.

A list of all previous topics in this series can be found here.

So, what (or how) are you doing this week?

I'll start by saying yes and no, but the reasons for my answer are personal and familial ,so if you don't like that skip my answer.

I have just watched ‘Mary Poppins Returns’, after yesterday watching the original ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time. I have not, to my knowledge, ever watched ‘Mary Poppins’ in full before now. I’ve caught snippets of it on weekend television, but I’ve never seen it from start to finish. Well, with our new Disney+ streaming subscription, I’ve finally seen ‘Mary Poppins’ for the first time yesterday, and followed it up by watching ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ today.

‘Mary Poppins Returns’ is a sequel in name only. It’s basically a remake of the original. It’s as if the director had a checklist of everything ‘Mary Poppins’ contained, and just checked them off in this sequel:

• Mary Poppins herself. Check.

• A dirty working-class friend with a heart of gold. Check.

• Children who didn’t know how to have fun. Check.

• A father who needed to rediscover his children and his own childish joy. Check.

• A woman who’s working for a progressive cause. Check.

• Bank seen as a negative institution. Check.

• Quirky relative of Mary Poppins who gives the children a different point of view. Check.

• Animated sequence. Check.

Actually, I’m surprised that there is an animated sequence in the sequel, given how much P.L. Travers reportedly hated the animation in the original. (Strangely, I’ve seen ‘Saving Mr Banks’ a couple of times, and even watched a documentary about Ms Travers somewhere along the way.) But I suppose she’s dead now, so her input is limited to just turning in her grave.

It even gets more detailed than that. Individual musical numbers have been mapped from one movie to another:

• Vaudeville-style song & dance number within the animated sequence, with the main characters performing alongside cartoon animals. Check.

• Big dance number featuring the aforementioned working-class friend and his colleagues. Check. The names even have a metaphorical resonance: “Step in Time” becomes “Trip a Little Light Fantastic”.

• Uplifting song at the end of the movie. Check. But instead of being about a child’s toy that flies in the sky (kite), let’s make it about a different child’s toy that flies in the sky (balloon).

It’s a shame that Julie Andrews can’t sing any more. It would have been lov-er-ly (ha!) to see her in the cameo role that Angela Lansbury had. Not that I have anything against Ms Lansbury: far from it! But Dick Van Dyke got a small role, and it would have been nice to see Ms Andrews pop up as well. A little on-screen moment between her and Emily Blunt would have been sweet.

There was one thing that the director left off his checklist, though: singable songs. While everyone knows “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” and can sing it at the drop of a hat, noone is going to be singing “A Cover is not the Book”, as fun as it was. “A Spoonful of Sugar” is fun and memorable, while “Can You Imagine That” is fun and forgettable.

This is not to derogate the performances. There were no weak links in this chain. Emily Blunt was spot-on as Mary Poppins. Lin-Manuel Miranda was technically great as Jack the lamplighter (and he certainly did a better Cockney accent than Dick Van Dyke – which admittedly isn’t hard). Miranda lacked a little heart, but is a great singer and dancer. The rest of the cast were also good. Not a sour note among them. They were just let down by a weak script and poor songs.

The new Mary Poppins movie is a watered-down copy of the original – and the original wasn’t the best movie in the world to start with! I love me a good musical. I have a whole shelf full of musicals on disc, along with assorted soundtracks. I can quite happily spend an afternoon with ‘The Wizard of Oz’ or ‘Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory’ or the family-friendly ‘My Fair Lady’. But ‘Mary Poppins’ was too bland for me. And its sequel/remake was even blander.

For any of you who have been in a book club before. Any lessons learned? Nice to haves? Things to avoid? This is going to be limited to a fairly small group (4-6 people), so I feel like I don't need to get too formal with anything. But at the same time, I know that a good structure goes a long way to a successful regular reading club.

We have pretty a varied reading pace between us. One of us can read a book a day. I'm more at the book (300~ pages) every week or two pace myself. I'm sure that others may read faster or slower than that still. So I figure a book a month is decent for keeping to a casual-but-intentional reading pace for most of us.

Part of this is intended to be a way to keep in touch with friends I don't get to talk to as often anymore, and part of it is just reading new books I wouldn't even think to read.