Just Another Fish

I sort of fried my PSU. My postings have been infrequent till now; expect the same except more so.

TECHNICAL
As noted below, the attempt to install Debian was not exactly successful. It didn’t seem to install/boot a graphical interface, which I consider rather important. Oh, what with M$ being lovely people and all, XP no longer booted up. Thankfully, Mahinda had already lent me (most of) SuSE 9.0. This worked (though XP still didn’t), though my wireless network card didn’t.

After some tinkering I was able to make both XP and Linux not work.

After some more tinkering (involving repair consoles and hard-disk jumper moving) and an XP CD courtesy of Adrian I now have XP back up, and presumably also Linux if I use the CD to boot (not yet entirely sure how to do it otherwise).

However, since I would quite like the internet on Linux — for it to be my main OS, in fact — I am now downloading over 3Gb of SuSE 10.0, which it seems might sort it out. The torrent is estimated to be fully downloaded in 30 hours (note from a few minutes later: now 60 hours…), and then I shall have to purchase 5 CDs from Pete.

SOCIAL
I discovered I have Not Much Money again, and haven’t gone out much this week. Also got a cold over the weekend, otherwise would have seen Wallace & Gromit at the cinema. On friday went to Pleasure for one of Si’s record label’s nights. Main insights: Shmoo, as written on the band’s drums, rotates into Oowys. A fact I shared with the lead singer. Note: I must burn a CD of my Broadcast stuff for them as I think they sound similar.

Manchester seems to have run barren of Girls For Me To Fancy. I find this state of affairs extremely tedious.

SPORTS
Not much here, again. I have now been to taekwon-do once since taking my red belt grading (apparently I passed) 2 weeks ago. This is Not My Fault:

Monday: At PA Consulting presentation.
Wednesday: Waited for a bus for an hour. It didn’t come.
Saturday: No training as there’s an instructors course I am too broke to attend on.
Monday: I went!
Wednesday: England match plus severely busted knuckle from punching a breaking board (twice) on Monday.
Saturday: Damned cold.

The job is going OK. Bloody tiring though. On to the important news:

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Due to a computer that has lately become slower than a dead pensioner, and a hard-drive that is — in a very technical sense — absolutely buggered, I have bought myself a new hard-drive.

And I am about to install Linux (Debian 3.1) on it.

Gulp.

I am actually quite excited about the prospect, but rather scared too. What could go wrong? Well,

• The old wireless network (and misc. hardware) is likely to cause problems.
• Usernames and passwords? Hmm. Ahhh.
• Some programs I rather need Windows for - apparently HAM doesn’t run on WINE. I will probably dual-boot with Windows because of this.
• Absolutely anything else. Computers hate me (see The Pauli Effect).

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Well, I am now a Red Belt in taekwondo. Somehow I feel more bemused than proud; I’m not that good, surely? Also, in yesterday’s training session we were asked to try to break boards with a punch. These are not nice wooden breaking boards. These are the re-useable plastic ones. Here’s a tip: don’t punch them. My knuckle is now twice normal size and a little painful. And no, I didn’t break the board….

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Hmm…

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I think I am starting to embrace my geekiness. Rather than consider all of my, hmm, psycho-social issues ^(*) to be my own personal and unique failings, I can just consider them basic symptoms of being a nerd. At least that way I shouldn’t be so overwhelmed by everything.

(*)

• I do not like meeting new people
• I do not like being in a big group
• I cannot handle intimacy
• Let’s face it, I am a little manic-depressive….
• I prefer games and any other sort of escapism to actual interaction
• I think I shall stop there, I hear Linux calling