Tag: technical difficulty

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It only gets worse.

Remember when I was saying how my Linux machine keeps getting worse? I’d fix one problem and another one would surface, more severe than the previous? Well, the last problem had required the reinstallation of the entire operating system, so I thought it was downhill from there.

I was wrong.

I took the precaution of turning off the 3GB hard drive in the BIOS (which is the hard drive which contained all of the important data on Habitrail), which in retrospect I should have physically disconnected and powered off just to be sure. So I finally got one of the network cards working (or so I thought, turns out it’s still not routing or something) so I figured the time had come to move the old data onto the new drives.

I then discover, after re-enabling the hard drive, that I’ve somehow managed to wipe the partition table on it.

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

Technically, this is a recoverable error. I’ve backed up the entire hard drive into two big files, so that I can always step back to this moment in time. Now, I just have to see if I can remember what the partitions were… ARGH.

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Computer Hell

So last night I tried once again to get my machine working… made some very stupid mistakes (i.e. forgetting the computers start counting at 0, not 1) and managed to wipe out the entire contents of my 20GB hard drive… which contained (if you remember) my entire MP3 collection. The bright side of this is that it forces me to reencode all of my CDs again, this time I can even turn on error correction, thus saving me the task of having to listen to all of my MP3s to determine which ones had blips and skips in them, a project which I had completely ignored for a long time.

After fixing the mistake though, I managed to get the Linux machine booting with the new install of RedHat… and lo and behold… the network cards aren’t working. It’s just one thing after another. To recap:

  • I want to get Microsoft Networking working for all the computers, and have Habitrail be the central file and printer repository, so I
  • Try to install Samba, which seems to work, but I can’t get working because the printer isn’t working, so I
  • Play with the machine for quite a bit before I realize that I didn’t compile parallel port support into the kernel, so I
  • Configure and compile a new kernel, which doesn’t work because of some issues with modules, so I
  • Continue tweaking the kernel, and eventually give up and try to install a clean install of RedHat, so I
  • Physically switch the two hard drives, so the /dev/hda will be the blank 30GB drive, which doesn’t install because one of the other partitions wasn’t unmounted properly, so I
  • Flounder for a while trying to figure out which drive it is, but eventually find it, and reinstall RedHat, which after an hour decides not to boot at all, so I
  • Try to boot off of a boot disk, which doesn’t work, so I
  • Try to figure out why the disk isn’t booting, it turns out to be a bad floppy drive, so I
  • Borrow a floppy drive from Luke and swap it out; it works, so I boot and fix the file system and install RedHat, but make the stupid mistake described above, so I
  • Spend two hours trying to figure out why the computer is booting form the wrong (i.e. the old) hard drive, where it turns out because I inadvertently told it to. (HDD1 is the second Hard drive, not the first), so I
  • Switch it to HDD0 and boot, and it boots, but doesn’t recognize one of the network cards for some reason, so I
  • Try to just get one of them working, but neither works, so I
  • Go to bed.

And that’s what I’ve been doing in all my free time since Sunday night. I have made zero forward progress, unless you count upgrading from a working RedHat 6.2 install to a not-working RedHat 7.0 install and wiping out my MP3s progress.

In the meantime, July 1st is rapidly approaching, and I really really really should be spending my time packing and moving the remaining stuff out of my old apartment. And as Anime Expo approaches, I’m going to have less and less free time. I think I’m going to designate this weekend as a “All moving, nothing but moving” weekend, and get it all done. No fun for me on Saturday and Sunday.

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Chinese water and other kinds of (self) torture

Okay, this one’s gonna be long, but it’s worth it… past all the techweenie stuff is some very amusing personal tragedy.

So let’s back up to last night about 7pm. I get home first for a change, and I sit down at my computers to get the network up and running. See, I have this ideal in my head where every computer in the house (yes, there are at least 7) can connect to the internet, and print to the printers, and in an ideal world, see each other via Microsoft Networking, although I think I’m going to settle for just having a common file server to dump stuff on.

The central focus for all my efforts lies in the hands of a single machine, oh so lovingly named “habitrail,” my Linux machine, which has been serving as my gateway/webserver/MP3 storage site for the last two years.
Continue reading “Chinese water and other kinds of (self) torture”

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Ugh and other randomness

You can tell what kind of day it’s going to be by how many of the new emails you get in the morning get marked “to do”.

Today was 6, which is on the high side for me.

I got my Game Boy Advance in the mail… and probably won’t be able to play it for a few days.

I was up until 2:30am last night moving my Linux machine to the new place, now that we have working DSL (yay). Silly me, I tried to upgrade it at the same time, which created all sorts of lovely problems and I ended up going back to the old motherboard. So yes, it’s still a Pentium MMX 166. At least now it has more memory and more disk space… but damn, it’s slow.

I think the constant exposure to high levels of dust is giving me allergies or something… go figure. I need to finish moving.

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$144.31

Never have I been so happy to owe the IRS money.

When you get an envelope from the IRS in late May, you get scared. the “A” word crosses your mind.

You start praying that it’s not an audit, just interest because you paid late.

It was interest, lucky for me.

Oh, and I found my DVD battery charger. Now I just need that damn cable…

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Pacific Bell, how we loathe thee…

So, we’re starting to move into the new place, and we want to get DSL set up. The landlord had DSL through Pacbell before, so we thought that we could just transfer the account over, without having to have a technician come out and set up the line again.

We thought wrong.

My conversation with Pacbell went like this:

Me: I’d like to transfer the account over to my name.
Them: We can’t do that, he’s signed a contract with us.
Me: Well, can he cancel his contract and we’d sign a new one, but not have to disconnect the line?
Them: No, it doesn’t work that way.
Me: Well, fine then, just make a new account.
Them: Have you set up your new line in the house yet?
Me: No…
Them: You have to have your line set up, then five business days later you can order DSL, once it’s in the system.
Me: Fine, can I do that now.
Them: Yes, let me transfer you.

And then I go and actually transfer my line. Yay. So as of tomorrow morning, if you call me at home, you won’t get me, you’ll get Ken and Luke… heh. But the only people who ever call me at home are my mom and telemarketers, everyone else uses my cell phone.

Now I get to play with getting the Cable service transferred… heh heh heh.

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Etc.

So, SGI not only shipped the replacement power adapter right away, it came at 10am the next morning, which basically means that 24 hours after I made the call to customer support, I was up and running again.

But anyway.

I’ve been pondering a lot about my trip to Chicago. It seems that I caught some glimpse of something: there is life outside of California. It’s not just the weather, too. There’s subtle differences that make life in the Midwest unique. Little things that you Midwesterners take for granted that seem so foreign to us West-coasters.

Toll booths. Snow routes. Driving for an hour and actually being in a different state. Vacationing hundreds of miles away in the same place every year. The list goes on and on.

The concepts all mesh together into a feeling that seems to familiar. I could joke that it’s because I was born in Indiana and it’s in my blood, but it’s probably simpler than that. I’m the son of two people who grew up in the Midwest. It’s certain that many of their ideals were imprinted on me, in such a way that when I find myself in a small town in the suburbs of Chicago, I feel almost at home.

I’m not saying that I’d want to move back there. I’d be such a fish out of water it wouldn’t be funny. That, and I was in Indiana in December, so I know how bad it can be. I may have Indiana in my blood, but I can handle 110 degree weather much easier than I can handle -10 degrees. (That’s 110 with zero humidity, for those of you who want to comment that it can get pretty hot in the Midwest, too.)

I don’t think I’ve managed to get down in writing the feeling I have right now, but I think I’ll reiterate/summarize — I’ve started to understand how people can actually manage to live in the Midwest. There is life outside of California.

Meh. I think I’m going to bed now. God, I hope Luke stops snoring… I can’t wait until we move into our new place, at least there I’ll have a wall between me and his snoring.

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SGI and Anime Central

So, my nice new flatpanel monitor has been on the fritz recently, after some playing with it, I figured out it’s one of the power supplies that’s broken, not the actual monitor… so I call SGI this morning, and after giving them all my information I hear the following words:

“I’ll just overnight you a new one.”

Man, I am so happy. This is what Customer Support is supposed to be.

On another note, today’s MegaTokyo comic is very cool…. because I was there. You can even see the Vibrating Sheep of Death in my picture.

I love in-jokes that I get. Hee hee.

Also, I gave my 30-day (well, more like 45 day) notice at my apartment today… whee.