Linkstew

Subject: NeXTCube Serial Number AA001032 ("Burning Cube" -- any relation to Burning Man?)

This is a great story -- I've actually read it before, but man it's funny. Also, that picture of the cube funeral pyre is now my desktop background at work. =)

Heh, when templates go wrong:

If you're curious, that's from the new computer store that just opened on the corner of Haste and Shattuck, across from the Used Computer Store.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but once the joke sunk in, this made me laugh out loud: amibiosornot.com.

Well, I had these grand plans for the weekend, and I had some successes and some failures. First the games, then dad's computer:

• Rogue Leader was finished and done on Thursday Night.
• Luigi's Mansion was started Saturday night, and was finished and done by Sunday Morning (5 am ish).
• I never actually took Metal Gear Solid out of its case.
• I forgot Zelda Oracle of Seasons, so,
• Instead, I played 6 more missions of Advance Wars.
• And I've played 5 hours of Golden Sun so far.

As for my dad's computer? It's working pretty well. The first thing that didn't go according to plan was I didn't copy his previous system folder onto my iPod, because I (incorrectly) assumed there was nothing there he needed. Um, fonts? Bookmarks? Duh?

OS X 10.1.1 (with 9.2.1 on the assist) runs pretty dang well on his Yosemite 350 with 1 gig of RAM, and any speed he loses is more than made up for by the time he doesn't spend rebooting after a crash.

CorelDraw 10 seems much better behaved than CorelDraw 8, but it does have some issues with a few fonts that consistently make it crash. Work around? Delete the troublesome fonts. And even when it crashes, it's still a big win because it doesn't force a reboot.

What does cause problems is the internal modem, which seems to like to freeze up the interface to the point of zero-responsiveness, which forces a reboot. =( It's a shame, but he had problems dialing up in 8.6, too, so I'm hesitant to blame OS X.

His digital camera worked dandy via USB and OS X's image capture application, and his printer works fine from Classic and OS X.

He seemed happy enough with things, so I left him with OS X for now. Hopefully things work out, and hopefully I didn't overlook too much, and hopefully he's actually more productive now that things won't crash so often.

Hi. I'm feeling very helpless and kind of depressed at the moment.

You see, today I got 512 megs of RAM for the lower slot in my PowerBook, and I quickly put it in, and my PowerBook quickly did not boot up. Not even a chime or a crash. Just silence. Nothing.

I was pretty calm about it the first time. I've had plenty of things not work the first time. So I pulled everything back apart, and double checked some instructions, and I put everything together again, and my PowerBook didn't boot again. Rinse and Repeat, several times.

It quickly came to be 2 o'clock, and I had class, so I left my laptop in pieces in the office. I felt naked walking around campus because my backpack was seven pounds lighter than normal. And for three hours I sat in class, growing more and more anxious about my PowerBook. For the last hour of 170 I could barely stay focused (That the lecturer is hard to understand doesn't help. That the lecturer is going over the exact same thing as last semester when I didn't get into the class, but attended for three weeks, helps even less).

I hurried back to the office, and I renewed my attempts to make my poor little PowerBook boot. I found this page of links to official Apple Service Manuals (the same manuals that an official repair-person would use). I tried the trouble-shooting tactics that I was capable of with my limited resources (I don't have a whole spare PowerBook of parts to drop in as a replacement), but it was all for naught.

And then there was a breakthrough! For three hours I'd been trying to make my PowerBook boot, but the processor card hadn't been seated. I felt like a fool -- I should have noticed that the card was freely coming out, but that I'd had to really tug to actually remove it in the first place -- I'd just been afraid to apply enough pressure to get it back in. With relief, I put everything back together, put in my batteries, hit the power button, and listened to the beautiful sound of

Nothing.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. I took it apart and put it back together a few more times, trying all the permutations of the RAM. I made sure to actually seat the processor card each time. And each time, nothing. So I gave up and walked home, planning to try using my AC power adapter instead of my batteries.

But when I got home and pulled the PowerBook out of my backpack, it was warm, bordering on hot. It felt like it normally feels after several hours of constant use. I quickly took the batteries out and pulled off the keyboard, and found the insides very hot. So I let it cool down for awhile while I cooked dinner. After dinner, I plugged in the AC adapter, but it still didn't power on, and it started heating up just like it had with the batteries in my backpack.

So I unplugged it and removed the batteries and put it in the bag. I'm going to take it to the Mac Store on Saturday, since I'm booked solid with meetings and class tomorrow. I hope they'll be able to do something. At the very least, they should have the resources to run more tests and narrow down what the problem is. And if the Mac Store can't help, I'll try calling Apple.

And if it can't be fixed? Well, I already skimmed eBay looking at used Pismo PowerBooks. I already have lots of accessories for this PowerBook that are incompatible with new Apple Portables (an extra battery and an extra power adapter, for starters). I also like the design of the Pismo better than the new Apple portables, and I happen to like having a dual of batteries. And for that matter, even if they can fix my laptop, I'm seriously considering picking up a used Pismo in six months or a year as a backup, because I like it that much and I want spare parts.

But without my PowerBook, I'm feeling very... out of sorts. In fact, I'm feeling kind of powerless. I can't work in class, and my freedom of work at home is seriously impaired. I wasn't able to watch TV without getting really upset, because I always have my PowerBook with me when I'm watching TV. And tonight I'm using my desktop (for more than five minutes) for the first time in months. Basically, I've become totally dependent on a laptop instead of a desktop, and I'm going to have to get some sort of working laptop in the next month or I'm going to get really cranky.

And for that matter, I better have a working mac by the time OS X 10.1 comes out. Bah, it looks like paying to fix my stupid mistake is going to be karmic balance for working 60 hours of overtime this pay period.

This is pretty much a quick list off the top of my head, based on what I didn't do this summer and what I know I want to do.

• Read House of Leaves, some Gaiman or another that I haven't read, and Pratchett's The Last Hero (assuming it gets released on schedule).
• Stumble through another semester without failing.
• Play Metal Gear Solid (I'm already half done with it) before Metal Gear Solid 2 comes out, play Xenogears before Xenosaga comes out, etc.
• Do my best to prepare for the release of the Gamecube on November 18th, by hopefully getting ahead in school before it's too late.
• Actually overhaul that other site I work on.
• Actually consolidate my Desktop computers, and turn the remains into a PC for my brother.
• Meet with my advisor to make sure that I'll be able to stay at Berkeley another year, and if I can't stay an undergrad, make plans to take tests and apply to Grad School. Yes, this is as backwards as it sounds.
• Get a life outside of work.
• Dust the untouched corners of my apartment. Notably, the shelves in my room.
• Get new ideas for The Stew from CS 170 and 188, and possibly implement them.

Yeah, that's more than I'll be able to do, and I know it. I'm already performing triage in my head, and yes, the games are (well, not counting the Gamecube) are going to be the first to get the cut.

another.reshall.berkeley.edu has been up for awhile now. It was up for almost 25 days before I moved back to Berkeley, but before that it was never up for more than about 10 days, because I was either moving it, or swapping parts, or playing games before Dorfl was born. And this uptime will soon come to an end, and again have to be restarted, because once I get a new PCI NIC, another will have to be shut off to put the card in. Funny how that works, huh?

So a guy on misc found this deal to get a sweat hub for $5, which was apparently a promotional deal, and the group of us that were going to order some hubs together to save on shipping didn't order before the supply was depleted, or so they claim... So now I know, and I can finally go and order a hub and NIC together...

So I've been taking pictures, honest. I've got a couple of lightning even! It's just that the pictures are stuck on Dorfl... Well, Let me explain, as I've been alluding to a problem of isolated machines, but not explaining. I guess it seemed to me that you all would know, but now I get it and will tell you what is going on.

So in Bakersfield, each of my machines had one NIC, and the Internet connectivity was acquired through a serial modem connected to another. But here, another's NIC is used to connect to the network, so it can't connect to my other machines. This wouldn't be THAT much of a problem, and I could just unplug another, and plug it into the hub and just like that it would all fall into place and I'd be able to talk to the other machines. The second problem is that I don't have a hub, and this summer I was using my parents. But now that I know what the status of that hopeful hub order is, I can now order another hub and another nic for another.

And also, I changed the name of BSCam to Another Web Cam, or A Cam for short. I also suspect that I will be moving Another Web Page from Intelegenesis to be hosted at another.reshall.berkeley.edu sometime this fall, so if www.intelegenesis.com/bs/ ever stops working, try another.reshall.berkeley.edu. And finally, I think I will once again try to overhaul my People pages, and possibly slam them into a database or something fun like that.

Well, the BScam is, at least. But remember, just because it's fully operational does not mean that it's cosmetically complete. It takes a picture every four minutes, and then uploads it for your viewing pleasure. Some day there will be a nice pretty page to frame my mug or the back of my head of whatever, but for now, it's framed in bee-you-tea-full netscape grey.

While the BScam is happy at last, hex is far from it. Given that he is a half-baked potato at present, it's no wonder, really... But my X and my emacs installs are exceptionally whacked and disjointed. Re-warming the potato hasn't helped any, either. I think sometime soon I'm going to have slink back to Slink so I can have a working and happy linux install at home.

For those who aren't in the know, I run Debian GNU/Linux. The last released version was 2.1, which was otherwise known as Slink. The version of Debian which is currently being worked on is known as Potato. Since is it isn't finished yet, it's a "half-baked potato". Hur Hur...

Well, Hex is a little ill, at least when he tries to run Windows. And no, it's not just Windows that causes it. The TNT/TNT2 drivers and the ALi motherboard chipset just do NOT get along well. No games are playable when hex is behaving like that. So what I've been considering doing is getting hex a Celery and board, and putting them into hex. He'd work, then, at least. And then I could play games with my TNT2 and 128 megs of RAM when I reboot. However, it'd be nice to use the TNT2 board full time... I don't know. Things will have to be juggled, I think, but in the near term, I'll just get the board and chip, and put them in hex. And maybe a modem, so he can practice masqing before it's important. There's a computer show the 19th. I'll have to scope things out then. At the last show, I saw a Celery 300A (which can be overclocked to 450) and board combo for around $150, and I could probably find a 56k modem for $50.

Then I could put my K6-2 333 into Dorfl, though I'd have to underclock it to 300, because Dorfl's board is dumb. And on a side note, the CD-RW drive is now on it's way to Iowa, to be RMA'd, with a supposed turn around time of 3 to 4 weeks.

And Vimes is as content as ever. Who needs a G3?

So, since I've been back, I've seen Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace a couple more times. I wrote a review of it for The Kern Valley Sun, which I will post online probably later today. I filled up my room with all kinds of strange gizmos, and there's hardly room to walk anymore. I built a PC to run Windows and named it Dorfl. I moved my 486 to Intelegenesis for the summer, reinstalled Debian and renamed it Astfgl. I discovered how bad my allergies really are, went to the Doctor, and got some medicine to make it not so bad. I attacked a grove of bamboo, which is an evil plant. I saw D. and Galatea and Heath and some other people I know perform in a Musical at West called She Loves Me, which I enjoyed a lot. I spent a couple of days in Kern Valley, had some decent food, and fixed a few computers. I attended Don's surprise Birthday Gathering, along with Alan and Jason Curtis, and Joan and Gerhardt Jacobs. I bought a CD-RW at a computer show, and it, according to tech support, is defective, so I have to wait on the RMA... I bought a Viper 770 TNT2 board, which of course isn't supported in Linux, so it's sitting in a box. I bought a nice keyboard, which almost has the right key layout (Astfgl still has my favorite keyboard, my mac the second favorite). I bought a Logitech TrackMan Marble +, because it was pretty cheap, and I still love that thing, though I don't like the scroller as well as three buttons. I bought a Sound Blaster Live, which puts out nice sound, under Windows at least. I bought all of the Star Wars Lego Sets but one, and most of them are really nice, though one or two aren't that great. I bought the game Star Wars: Episode I: Racer, which is based off of the Podracer scene in the movie, and it is not bad, though it certainly isn't great, and is much better suited to be a console game than a computer game. I bought the game X-Wing: Alliance, which is absolutely awesome and is awesome and is great and I haven't found a thing wrong with it yet and I would really rather be playing it right now than doing anything else. And I got my digital camera...