Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"There is a belonging that goes beyond language. There is a society that's older than wheat. There is a warmth more ancient than fire. We are closer to our world than we think. When you feel most alone, hold still a moment. Listen. You'll hear the world speak. This is one of us. Let him pass." -- axiomaxiom, 2005-05-31

[Happy Celtic New Year.]

I'm frustrated; annoyed at my body and at my own poor planning, for a thoroughly unsatisfying Hallowe'en night (I'm tempted to declare Hallowe'en continued for as many days at it takes for me to be happy with it -- wasn't Samhain originally a three-day holiday?). Not up to much today -- in fact, about to nap in hopes of feeling well enough for rehearsal tonight -- but I did unwind a little of my frustration reducing computers to parts.

I've got a container for case & slot screws, another for drive-mounting screws, an anti-static bag of SIMMs to find a way to test at some future time, a couple of motherboards that I'm reasonably certain I won't be needing again (386/16 maxed out at 1 MB RAM, P/75 delivered to me in "won't even beep; use for parts" condition (though it might have beeped if the speaker wire hadn't been cut, which I didn't notice until I'd already yanked a bunch of components out of it) -- and when I remember what room the 286/10 is in, I'll strip that too), and little stacks of parts. Now I need to find boxes suitable for organizing those stacks in ("suitable" for this purpose being a very broad target) so that I can organize the rest of the loose parts and whatever else comes out of dead or to-be-completely-reconfigured machines. And I need to decide which cases are worth keeping.

This is a sort of a followup to last night anyhow, when I finally replaced the power supply in my main Linux machine, which had been making "I'm gonna fry as soon as you turn your back" noises for quite a while and making me nervous. (It's the fan, of course, and I'll see about replacing the fan and returning the power supply to the spares bin later.) I wanted a quick repair to minimize downtime, so I started hunting for good power supplies in the to-be-stripped machines. The first one wouldn't come out; I need a loooong Phillips screwdriver to get it loose. The next is physically huge, so it doesn't fit inside the Linux machine's chassis (it came out of an oversize desktop case, and the Linux machine is in a medium tower). It's now sitting on the desk next to the tower, happily spitting cold air so quietly that I keep thinking the machine has lost power and going to check. I hope the fact that the air coming out is cold means that I'm going to get away with replacing a 250W supply with a 200W one.

Anyhow, if I do a little more of this, I'll have a clear spot on what was supposed to be my workbench to repair the machines that need fixin', and to configure a couple of machines I've wanted to assemble for a while. Maybe by Christmas, since I don't know when I'll get back to this after today.

Orderly disconsctruction. Therapeutic, and something I could actually manage to do despite how I feel physically today.

At one point I was amused to note that over the past several years I've gone from being the last person ever to get a CD player (a hand-me-down, of course) or a CD-ROM drive, to having six machines with CD drives in them (two with burners), and a stack of six more CD-ROM drives loose.

Is there any conceivable use for a 41 MB IDE drive nowadays? I hate to junk a perfectly working drive, but these days I use bigger drives than that for dedicated swap space.