entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

This time it didn't panic, it just froze.  I can't take this anymore; i'm going to have to go to Fry's and get the special-of-the-week and build a new system.  And i can't do it on Xmas, and i can't do it the day after Xmas because i'll be packing for my trip to Vegas, so it'll have to sit until i get back, but it'll no doubt freeze or crash while i'm gone, so i HAVE to do it tomorrow and Monday.

... but i've decided to stick it into an icon instead.

Also, i've migrated my server to its previous motherboard and it's happy now.  So that's a relief.

My server is doing the random crash dance again.  Anyone have an EMP generator handy?

After removing the suspect drive and suffering more crashes, all while i was trying to transfer files to and from drives, i determined that the culprit was the goddamned primary 80-wire UDMA cable.

I ended up moving some files instead of copying them from drive to drive, so in returning to my original drive, i was missing some stuff, most importantly some log files; syslogd (the program that writes system logs) is still stupid in that if it tries to log to a file and realizes that it's not there, it will fail with a whine instead of creating the file.  This is indisputably broken behavior and i don't know why we put up with it this way.

The worst of all this was that i blew away my mail server configuration.  Not a big deal, though, just a moment of panic.  There's also some brokenness in my news spool, but i think that'll sort itself out after tonight's expiration run.

If you receive any bounced e-mail from me or Kim, please try again.  More later, after lunch with matrushkaka and Mom of matrushkaka.

a flaky hard drive
plus a panicky machine
equals ANGRY RONE

"I pressed 'Yes' once to allow the installation. My computer quickly became contaminated with the most spyware programs I have ever received in a single sitting...all told, the infection added 58 folders, 786 files, and an incredible 11,915 registry entries to my computer."

My DVD drive just broke (the tray slides freely, and it won't read the disc even if it's closed all the way), so now i can't play Pirates!, although its charm is already waning.  The game gets repetitive after a while, and playing at Swashbuckler level is insanely hard (your opponents in duels are lightning fast and your crew gets disgruntled pretty much as soon as you leave port).  As far as gameplay failures go:

• When you split the plunder and spend nearly a year on land, nothing changes outside; if there was a villain on his way to a port, he remains on his way.
• Criminals will patiently stay in hiding wherever they were first reported no matter how long it takes you to get there.
• Sailing can be tedious; instead of making your ship sail slowly or quickly, depending on whether you're sailing against or with the wind, it should have your ship travel at a quick, constant pace and have the time pass more quickly or slowly (the wind almost always blows from the East, which can be a problem, but that might merely be a matter of realism, and i can accept that if it is).
• You can't buy a better ship.  The only way to change your vessel is via piracy.  While, yes, the game's name is Pirates!, it also offers the chance to play the game as a good boy.  And if you can sell vessels, why can't you buy them? Cannons are also almost never found for sale.
• More persistence problems: if a city gets a new governor, there should be a new governor's daughter, too.  This doesn't happen.
• Would it have killed them to have more facial models?  The same faces get old real fast.  Some configuration of your own pirate would've been nice, too (and, hey, there's a tale of women pirates in the manual, so why isn't that an option?  maybe romance the captain of the guard in each town instead of the governor's daughter, to keep it all nice and historically-accurately hetero).
• There are two cities that are not ports of the Caribbean; as a result, the only way to get there is getting out of the ship and walking there.  This is a monumentally tedious thing, as walking is about as slow as sailing against the wind (Panama isn't too far from the other coast, but Gran Granada is quite a walk).  While they probably put them in for historical accuracy, they needed to find a way to shortcut the traveling, maybe by setting waypoints on a map.
• You can take credit for events that the computer initiates, such as delivering immigrants, a governor, or a peace treaty, just for being there, even if you weren't assigned those particular tasks.  Conversely, if you are assigned a task and it fails, you aren't punished.

Also, i have a cold.  Bah.

Last Monday, i went to the Solaris 10 launch with my ex-partner in crime Tchie at the Tech Museum of Innovation.  Solaris 10 looks really good, especially compared to its predecessors; Sun claims you'll see a 20% increase in performance just by upgrading from 8 to 10.  Scott McNealy has really aged in the last few years; he looked a little hunched, even.

I've spent the last few days on jury duty call (found out this morning i was off scot free for a year, yay), so i threw my energy into cleaning the house and office, as well as tackling the huge amount of unfolded laundry in our room.  As a result of that, i called for the Great T-Shirt Cull of `04; verdict: one and a half grocery bags of T-shirts were consigned to oblivion (including my totally rad netrek shirt *sniff*).  It's not so bad; i just had to make space for new T-shirts (like mjg59's excellent "ESR STOLE MY CULTURAL HERITAGE").

Also, thanks to solipsistnation's alert, i picked up my copy of the Limited Edition of Sid Meier's Pirates!.  So i might be busy this long weekend when i'm not eating.

Andean aborigines haven't suffered enough under the white man's rule, apparently; now they will soon have a Quechua version of Windows at their disposal. You know, i make this face whenever i have to work on Windows, too.