quick workaround for: "Not a com32r image" when booting from USB stick on ubuntu.

[Note: The best solution is to just boot into windows and use unetbootin to make the USB.]


I've been trying to install a bunch of PC's to drive a bunch of CNC machines. Linux, as expected, manages to mess things up. When booting from a USB stick I get "Not a com32r image". The hack below seems to work:

After some fiddling around with the syslinux config files and still not getting it to boot properly, I found a deceptively simple workaround for this: Just type "help" on the BOOT prompt, and when you get the help menu, just hit enter. The system will now boot!

Confirmed that this also works for me when booting a USB stick created by 10.10's USB creator.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-mint-84/trying-to-boot-linux-mint-9-from-usb-flash-drive-vesamenu-c32-not-a-com32r-image-829397/

Not the only greek problem, but it can't help

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n23/james-meek/diary

Politis once looked into opening a restaurant with music. He found that the regulations insisted on one permit if he had a band with three stringed instruments, and another, completely different, for a band with four.

"You do not make the poor rich by making the rich poor."

Watch Does U.S. Economic Inequality Have a Good Side? on PBS. See more from PBS NEWSHOUR.

go team.

While there are many reasons for these troubling trends, the state cannot ignore the role its policies have played in the economic decline. For seven consecutive years, executives polled by Chief Executive magazine have ranked California as having the worst business environment in the country. In a 2011 survey of its members by CalRecovery, a California coalition of businesses and industries based in the state, 84% of about 400 executives and owners who responded said that if they weren't already here, they wouldn't consider starting up in the state, while 64% said that the main reason they stayed in California was that it was tough to relocate their particular kind of business. In a recent op-ed, Andrew Puzder, chief executive of Carpinteria-based CKE Restaurants, which manages 3,000 eateries around the country, called California "the most business-unfriendly state we operate in."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-cox-malanga-california-business-20111114,0,1011551.story

How to boot thinkpad X1 from USB.

1. Format USB stick so it has a bootable ISO image (linux has various ways to do this; I used usb-creator-gtk for no particular reason other than it was already on my machine).
2. Power cycle.
3. Hold down F12.  The initial screen says to hold down the "blue botton" which doesn't exist.
4. Select the USB stick from the bootable options.
5. Press return.

Of course, like many things to do w/ linux and installation these days, this just doesn't work (at least for me).  I keep hitting "(initramfs) Unable to find a medium containing a live file system" which is a known bug.  

So, now the google searching begins.  


Looks like it's a USB 3.0 issue.  The most expedient fix is to check for other USB connections on the laptop.  The one on the left side of the x1 seems to do the trick.

"Examples are the underrated IQ booster of the universe."

 Each technical paper I have to read lately serves as another inductive step proving this bromide.  Ugh.

Navy death ray

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/02/unexpectedly-navys-superlaser-blasts-away-a-record/

The free-electron laser is one of the Navy’s highest-priority weapons programs, and it’s not hard to see why. “We’re fast approaching the limits of our ability to hit maneuvering pieces of metal in the sky with other maneuvering pieces of metal,” says Rear Adm. Nevin Carr, the Navy’s chief of research. The next level: “fighting at the speed of light and hypersonics” — that is, the free-electron laser and the Navy’s Mach-8 electromagnetic rail gun.

Best thing in Zurich so far: Bowmore 18.

Unusual for an Islay: not much iodine, fruity, long finish.

Going to get a bottle when I get back in the states.

In other news: walked around for 20 minutes and saw 5 starbucks.  Weird.

For christmas: a glass as big as a bottle! And Macallan 18 is good.

I'm not going to spend $130 on a real bottle of it, but it had a nice, clean, dry taste.  More will be procured at some point.