Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

The objective I was trying to achieve during my recent tragic loss of data has been achieved, meaning that working from home just got a whole lot easier. (Tip: if you're using remote desktop over a VPN, you need to join a domain if you want it to work. This may be true only of clients running Vista.) As for the data loss itself, Nibs says she has "made it right". I still feel bad about it, though.

Second iPod reload in as many months of about 20 GB. It got nice and warm. I wonder how much data you can pump into one before it bursts into flames.

Needed: sleep, sewing time, and socializing. Three S's.

Still not going to Burning Man this year. No half-naked fairy coated in alkaline dust gave me a ticket, ride, and time. Le sigh. I guess I'll have to be my own fairy next year.

But first: every so often I have to wear 5" heels to remind myself why I only wear 5" heels every so often.

The new 'pooter is here, and it's everything I'd hoped for. The only real glitch in the various installations was that I have a PS/2 keyboard, and this box has only USB ports, which an $20 widget takes care of. (Good thing the company store isn't open weekends, or I might have bought another keyboard when I biked down there.) The specs:

Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.66 GHz
1.33 GHz FSB
4 GB RAM @ 667 MHz
300 GB HD
ATI Radeon 2400 video
32-bit Vista SP1

Finally, a twenty-first century machine in the Abbey office. Its response time makes me weep for joy. I can't believe Nibs hasn't tried it yet, but I think she's in for a much-needed treat.

Bah: an unanticipated new garage door opener, but I have to admit that it's nice to have one that a) works, b) is quiet, and c) has a working light in it. For the record, the Genie brand isn't so good, says the dude who replaced it.

Yay: a long-anticipated new 'pooter. The desktop that I'm typing on right now is over ten (10) years old. Oedipa's been a good machine, but she's awfully long in the tooth: Win2K, which many peripheral vendors no longer support even if MS does; USB 1 at a whopping 12 MB/sec; and her now-anemic 80GB of hard disk is twenty times what she came to us with.

Yay: My check was bigger than most of yours because I have a Wendling.

Yay: lots of places to go & people to see
Bah: not enough time -- Nibs was acting spooked, so I didn't ask.

Yay: DJ Catherine Jade rocked my socks at Z House.
Yay: peeps at nerdvana
Yay: yuppie eats at Z House
Yay: less yuppie eats at nerdvana
Yay: Adding stays improved the Doc Martens corset. niac took a good photo of it, which I'll post as soon as I have it.

Currently: trying to get an HP C4250 scanner/printer to talk to my hoary old Win2K desktop. Printing is OK; scanning isn't. Updated BIOS & drivers. HP suggests a powered USB hub. Hmm.

ETA: Problem solved through a combination of RTFM and removal of older versions of HP software. I'm pretty sure it would have Just Worked if I hadn't been doing this on a Win2K machine.

To continue with this week's theme of stuff lost & replaced, I'm looking at this post on a spiffy new 19" LCD monitor -- hooked up to a 10-year-old desktop.

I'm posting to you from my shiny new 64-bit P4 Duo Linux box, baybee. 130 GB of scribble room. 2 GB RAM. No waiting. And for the first time since early 1999, I don't have to use Windows at work.*

Nibs got me a Netflix membership for Other Parent's Day. Aw. DVDs are love. No more shall I be a Philistine when it comes to pop culture! If Scarecrow is a shlep for you as it is for us, Netflix is a godsend.

My boy is reading about as much Potter now as I've been reading to him, and he's been amazingly good about not staying up late to do it. This is almost certainly motivated by lust for the movies, which he watches obsessively, but it's a gift horses

I brought a corset down here meaning to mend it in the sun during lunch, but I spent that hour moving my 'pooter. I think I'll do that now by way of celebration.



*I'm not a partisan of any OS (anymore). I have to say, though, that since most of our customers use Linux it makes way more sense for me to do everything on it. Also, I think it's a more flexible and robust development platform, even if its bread-and-butter apps are rougher around the edges than the Windows equivalents. I haven't used a Mac since 1998, shortly after Apple shipped me a busted IP stack and drove me straight into Bill's clutches. I've also learned a burning hatred of Solaris. Yes, I know admins love it, but believe me, developers don't.

Yay: MyCo's new office has a wireless Internet connection via Clearwire until Verizon's cranial rectitis clears up in a couple of weeks.

Bah: The bandwidth of the Clearwire connection is much smaller than that of the Verizon one would have been (and will be). This means that our new VoIP phones render us nearly unintelligible. Gee, it's a good thing we're not doing sales or support here.

Yay: I can do work on my Linux box.

Bah: It can't talk to the VPN, upon which resides the CVS server. I can't even automount my PC or FTP to or from it -- never mind automated backups -- so if the Linux box horks its disk, I'm hosed. Fixed by rebooting both machines; the PC probably didn't know about the new domain server.

I just ran a laptop comupter from my hybrid car (to test the new adapter, ahem) and did actual work over wireless from the driver's seat. Dear Bob. I'm Astra the Future Girl.

Present: fell back into techie hell -- no DHCP for you, Miss Nunbritches. And why? I rebooted after a Windows Update. No good deed goes unpunished. I'm rapidly running out of options. I'm also being nibbled to death by ducks at my real job.

Future: ravey goodness with some of the same promoters & DJs who did Kinetic are doing something called Primal Matter at CHAC on Saturday. It should be a trance-y, hippie good time, and not a minute too soon for me.

The fact that I'm posting this from the dusty metal box I mentioned earlier is proof that kathrynt is worth her weight in working NICs, or maybe toasted parmesan on whole wheat. Part of the problem? An errant PPPoE service. I wonder if things are any easier for cable users.