And So.

A bit of early morning systems work and the Athlon X2 box is repaired. New motherboard, new heatsink... of course, with the new motherboard there's the requirement for a new copy of Windows. Perhaps the first Vista Home Premium box in the lineup? This not being a pressing concern I'll let the box sit, ready to be prepared to be ready for action.

And have you visited my flickr account lately?

Scanning Machine Set Up

Scanning printing machine set up, check. Billiard ball rear ended on Touhy Avenue by a woman who, according to a witness, "just didn't stop", yes. Even MORE stiff and achey than I had been... well, yes. Let's recap:

* Back goes out. Unable to move for a bit.
* Computer goes bad.
* Tires needed replacing.
* Rear ended.
* Ballast in kitchen has gone bad.
* Once again buried in possessions.
* Frittering technique has improved substantially.

Well, yes, this does seem like a trend. And if we were to do a regression analysis of these past couple of weeks we'd say I AM DOOMED. If this unlucky streak were to continue indefinitely that would certainly be so. All of my computers will go bad, my car will be flat as a pancake and need an infinite amount of repairs, I will be in a wheelchair in the dark because all the lights in my condo will have gone out, and I won't actually be able to wheel myself anywhere because I will have covered the place from floor to ceiling in rummage sale finds. Additionally, I will be better than God at preparing fried delicacies (fritters, french fries, fried meatballs(?)).

The thing about Donn Ha's, as noted by The Bat-Man, is that Donn Ha's are a superstitious cowardly lot who believe in things like lucky/unlucky streaks and karmic wheels. So let's review things in a more rational light and see what lessons the Super Supreme Being has actually presented us:

* Stretching and exercise are important! // Exercise more, stretch.
* Most computers can't function when the fans are encased in cat hair! // Dust my computers periodically.
* Tires wear out eventually! // Just a fact of life.
* The stretch of Touhy between Ridge and McCormick has a disproportionate amount of bad drivers and it's actually pretty amazing something hasn't happened before. // Take Howard or Pratt when heading west.
* I don't WANT fluorescent lights in my kitchen - they're practically useless for preparing food at night. // Replace the entire fixture with some incandescent lighting.
* If you thrift and rummage a lot, stuff will pile up. // I have multiples of everything I would ever want. Stop thrifting!
* I WILL be better than God at preparing fried things. // It's true.

Anyways, today was a pretty good day with much stuff gotten done, and the last two weeks have been pretty good in the helping other people doing good deeds area. Next week, off to Minnesota body shop permitting.

Hurrah

CentOS server transported into $5 dual celeron machine. Check!
Dedicated Windows XP music recording machine. Check!
Vista BootCamp on Macbook. Check!

So that leaves: setting up the scanning printing machine and rebuilding the Athlon X2 box.

The Road

My initial assumption was that my lucky streak had ended, and that I was in for an unlucky streak - things going bad of a sudden at the worst time. My front tires had developed slow leaks and needed replacing, my desktop computer had apparently given up the ghost to a quarter inch layer of cat hair clogging up the fan. But after mulling over things for a bit both of these are actually good, positive things. The Athlon X2 box had become my main computer and I had terribly neglected my MacBook, my on the road book go anywhere at the drop of a hat MacBook. And fresh tires? What could possibly be bad about having fresh tires?

So today will partly be spent reorganizing systems - getting the travel kit prepped again, turning a different under-utilized machine into a dedicated music recording/editing machine, another one into a file server/testing server/versioning server, maybe converting another one into a dedicated scanning server (possibly the tablet pc so the wacom can go in the travel kit with the macbook). And eventually I'll get some parts (motherboard, new case, new os) and reuse the Athlon parts.

Rummage Gods Bless You!

Continuing this impossibly good rummage season, I picked up an old computer on Saturday for $5 figuring it would be good for parts and it ends up having a dual processor motherboard - currently two celeron chips but I should be able to replace those and have a very, very capable server for the office, and reintegrate the 2GHz box into the windows pool.