cabbitzilla | Entries tagged with computers

So here I sit, awaiting the arrival of the brother-in-law so that we can get the heat tape installed on the trailer. Given that he did a 14 hour overtime shift at his job yesterday, I have -no- idea what time he'll show up. This should be the last of the outdoor projects for the season; with the onset of fall temperatures I'm not able to get much done before I have to come back in and warm up.

The nephew has pulled another little stunt, possibly two. The definite one is that he managed to unblock his phone and download over $100 worth of games. The potential one is that the parental controls I'd set up on his account have been turned off somewhere along the line... which means someone guessed either mom or dad's password and went hunting for it. Having logged in remotely, I discover that it's been pretty badly hacked. SOMEBODY has been visiting porn sites and picked up some nasty virtual STDs. Hopefully SpyBot can dig things out, as I do NOT want to have to reinstall that machine again. *makes a quick phonecall* Okay, so the only one home is the bro-in-law, and he's heading out to my place now. Everyone else is at church and will be coming here after, so I've got some time to try and disinfect 'Beasty'. And yes, I really did name the computer 'Beasty'.

Hrm. Definitely hacked. Key loggers and other fun stuff. I've sent a warning to my sister to keep everyone off of it. *sigh* I know who's responsible for this. And I know who let it happen. Tempting to just let it corkscrew itself to death and be done with it, but I know that's not an acceptable answer. My niece there has her laptop back, so I know she's not using the Vista comp. Bro-in-law uses the other machine and never touches the Vista machine. That only leaves two, sister and nephew.

I must've been a lawyer or something in a prior life. This has to be karmic payback.

EDIT: Brother-in-law is bringing Beasty to me, so I can work on it here AND keep anyone else from getting their passwords rooked. I've moved IM duties back to Mansion for the moment; I have to shut down the G4 or there's not enough juice to run Beasty. Sometime in the next few days I have to shut everything down and rearrange the power lines so that I can support a third machine out here. I have a pair of small UPS units that will go into place; in the event of a power outage Manion, the monitor and the KVM will be routed through it. The cable modem already has a battery in it, so I don't have to worry about it. *sigh* I need to know which one to smack. Maybe I'll just smack 'em both...

Current Mood: frustrated
Current Location: Trailer
Current Music: Nightwish - Bye Bye Beautiful

I has a Mac again! A lovely Sawtooth G4/350 donated to me by a dear friend. It's currently sitting with OS X 10.4.11 Server on it, and humming away merrily beside me. Once Delicious Library is installed and functional, I can finally start properly organizing my book collection. Well, /IF/ I can get the digital camera to work as a barcode scanner, which seems to be doable from what I've seen. My one big beef with OS X is the HUGE amount of install time. I realize there's a lot of data, but there should be some sort of overall status bar instead of a random number of minutes remaining. OS X is better than that; they shouldn't have to resort to 'Microsoft Time' on the installer. There're a couple of bugs yet to hammer out; it doesn't recognize my keyboard properly, so the 'insert' cluster between the number pad and the rest of the keys don't work. A glitch that's easily ironed out, that much I remember... I just don't remember quite HOW. My own damned fault for not keeping my notes somewhere findable.

And as an aside... at least one person out there seems to think I'm a Mac hater. She's wrong. She took a friendly joke way too damned serious, and that's that. Hopefully she'll come back, as she's a pretty nifty person when she's not loathing me.

Molly is still sick. She's eating a little, but is still not herself. She utterly hates the medicine (it smells vile, so I don't blame her) and has taken to sulking in the corner of her cage. I've made a special trip to the store to buy a small container of blueberries (her absolute favorite treat) to try and comfort her after the med. I'm worried about sick over her; the Mac stuff has all gotten done as I fidget back and forth between my desk and her cage. She's getting Baytril twice a day to treat the UTI, and I'm fidgeting. :(

I'm going to sign off now. Molly's drinking at the moment, which is good. If her tummy stops processing I'll lose her; she doesn't have the mass or strength to survive another bout of GI Stasis. I suspect I'm as unhappy about things as she is, poor fuzzle. :(

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: Trailer
Current Music: E Nomine - Vater Unser

So, Palace is built. She is as follows:

The prices were considerably different; every piece was on sale when it was purchased. Why Windows? Why not Linux? Well, I want to be able to play Champions Online and was unable to find anyone who had a clue about making it work under WINE. I also wanted it to be able to utilize the full 8gb of RAM that the mainboard will handle, even though there's only 2gb in it at present. Palace replaces Cathedral, which was the stolen Windows 7 machine. Spec for spec she's just a tiny bit better than her predecessor, tuned to what I needed for the game. Everything in her is Win7 compliant (including the SB Live! I had to add to , so she can be upgraded when necessary. And if she gets cut over to being a Fedora or Ubuntu box then so be it; the OS will bend to whatever my needs are. I've got both 32bit Windows and Linux at the trailer at my fingertips, so Palace will morph to whatever the needs of whatever I'm doing is.

I may be adopting a pair of guinea pigs, or at least referring them to a no-kill shelter with an arrangement with one of the local piggy rescues. I'll be postponing my (essentially useless) therapy visit tomorrow; too many things are stacking on tomorrow and I need to be sure I can get all the important things done. Hopefully another day or so will knock down the back pain I've been dealing with for nearly a week. I've got meds set out already for me, with an extra nudge of motrin to try and break the pain cycle. Wish me luck, eh?

As for anything else, it's probably best not to ask. My mood has been rather erratic the last week or so, mostly attributable to soaring pain levels. It's difficult to function as 'happy' when you can't stop the tears. And that's all there'll be of that.

And that's all there'll be of this post. Good night.

Current Mood: sore
Current Location: Trailer
Current Music: Judas Priest - Prophecy

Flovent HFA inhaler and Serevent Diskus have been added to my list of meds. I've had a warning from my sister about it possibly aggravating my already present vertigo issues. This'll be entertaining. Not.

Mom is intact. Leah did the long-overdue *Mart run and picked up most of what was on the 'needed for spring' list.

Dad is out of commo range; he had a gig to play tonight, and nothing short of actual death stops that man when he's supposed to play. Not even the birth of his firstborn was enough to pull him away. No, I'm not bitter. ... I seem to be saying that a lot here lately.

Evelyn won't have results until Friday. I've got various appendages crossed in hopes of it being something simple to fix.

Leah's sick, having discovered it while out doing mom's shopping. Poor kid is miserable. I did what I could to help while I was over there this afternoon.

Progress was made on the Vista-installed machine for Leah's family. In the process I've discovered that Pidgin doesn't particularly like Vista. There are some nice features in Vista, but I still have yet to see anything OMGMUSTHAVE! in it. I will say that the install process is damned tedius... it's all well and good to try and make an OS that was pretty like OS X, but dear God did they have to include the 'takes for f'inever' install time too?!

I'm tired. Too tired to cook. I ordered lasagna from Pizza Hut.

*thud*

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Location: Crys & Kelly's
Current Music: The Dishwasher - Swish and Spray

Okay. TMFH is damned near over. Crystal's methods and organization have officially decimated my doubts and fears. There's a half load of assorted debris stacked in the kitchen. There's still some plaster work that needs to be done, but the carpet cleaned up nicely. The trailer is cramped at the moment, with boxes stacked all over the place. Thanks to my mom, sister and niece the bulk of the kitchen has been unpacked and set up. I've got a mountain of laundry to do.

The electronics continue to be plagued with gremlins. Two tape decks, 2 vcrs, 2 dvd players, one dvd/vcr combo deck, and a tv... After several hours of testing, we finally discovered that it was the TV that had issues, not the rest of the gear. Frustration abounds. The computer gear is all set up, needing only the arrival of the ComCast folks... once I finally have the money to get them out to the trailer to hook things up.

I'm tired beyond belief. I'm going to go to bed now, and pray for actual sleep

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: Zydrate Anatomy - Terrance Zdunich

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I swiped it from

ginkage and got the same result. 's a pretty picture.

All the big stuff is moved. My crew is near dead as a result, and even I'm more crippled up than 'usual'. There's a lot of small stuff left in the apartment, most of my dolls, and one display cabinet that'll fit in the back of my Explorer once the truck is emptied. Most of the stereo gear is in place, just not hooked up. Same with the computer gear; for the first time since it was built Mansion is offline, powered down and unplugged. I went to try and start hooking things up and discovered that the box with the KVM and cables apparently hadn't made the journey to the trailer with the rest of us. Oops. The receiver for the stereo is still at Tommy's house. One of the dual deck tape players is in, the other is still in my truck. The backup receiver (in case the one Tommy has for me decides to be dead) is similarly inclined.

All of the major furniture is in place. Now -my- job hits, trying to unpack and organize what is essentially too effing much stuff for the dwelling to hold into some reasonable form. I was asked where to put one box and answered 'the attic'... and giggled like a loon when my niece looked around in puzzlement and then did the classic "...wait, what?" response. I've a good dozen loads of laundry to do on top of everything else.

I have no right to be sore, but I am.

Current Mood: stressed
Current Location: Crys & Kelly's

*peeks out*

Okay. Mansion 5 is now up. SP3, AVG, Spybot all locked in before it ever went online. Maybe this will last more than a day this time.

All but the single root drive is unplugged currently; it's the only way I could get the power consumption down into the range of the 450w PSU I have currently. New unit should arrive Monday-ish, along with the new case. Firefox 3 and Semagic are installed, and the next stop is at Cerulean Studios for the latest Trillian Basic release. There'll be no games for this machine until she's comfy in the new case with the rest of the drives hooked up; most of my games (and the near monstrous WoW directory) are already on them and just need linked. There're a handful I'll have to completely reinstall, but most of them are portable-ish. There. Trillian's installed, so now I can get it set up as well. Then it's a dive into the taskbar-based menus I use, getting them loaded and set up properly. Lots of little things to do, now.

M5. Symbolic, given my passion for Star Trek:

Kirk: "I'm curious, Doctor, why is it called the M5?"
Daystrom: "Well you see, M1 to M4 were not entirely successful. This one is. M5 is ready to take control of your ship."
Kirk: "Total control?"
Daystrom: "That is what it is designed for."
Kirk: "There are some things that Men have to do to remain Men, your computer takes that away."
Daystrom: "The computer can do your job ... One machine can do all those things that Men do now. Men can go on to do greater things..."

Hopefully I'll fare better than the Excalibur, Hood, Lexington and Potemkin did...

Or than the M5.

Current Mood: hopeful
Current Music: Nightwish - Dead Gardens

So the parts have been ordered. The projected final build is as follows:

RaidMax O^² ATX-302K Pink Steel ATX Mid Tower Case
Antec EA650 650w Power Supply
ECS PF21 Extreme Mainboard (superceded by the PF22 Extreme)
P4 3.20ghz Prescot 540 series processor (only link I found)
GigaByte GH-PDU22-SC EVR Sleeve CPU Cooler
G.Skill 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 667 (PC2 5400) Memory
Buffalo Select 1gb DDR2 667 (PC2 5400)
XFX GeForce 7600GS (discontinued)
Lite-On DVD +/- RW DL
Four Seagate Barracuda 7200rpm Hard Drives of varying size, roughly 3/4 tb of storage
Buffalo DriveStation 250gb 7200rpm External Hard Drive
ViewSonic OptiQuest Q9
LogiTech Cordless TrackMan Wheel
20 year old Model M keyboard (new equivalent)

Provided everything works, it'll easily be the best damned machine I've ever owned.

Lastly:
If there are one or more people on your friends list who make your world a better place just because they exist, and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the Internet, then post this same sentence in your journal.

A second G3/400 PowerBook has appeared; at worst it's spare parts, at best it's a second functional machine. And what am I going to do with these dated beasties? Boost the memory to 512mb, install/repair an OS on them, and give one to my niece Lauren and the other (possibly) to stay with me. They've only got 6gb drives in them, so there's not a lot of space for additional programs.

Lauren's machine will probably end up a linux machine. She's young enough that she'll learn it fairly quickly; start 'em young enough and hopefully they'll turn into OpenSource advocates. :) If I end up keeping one it'll definitely end up a linux machine. Since I have the blue & white G3/400 desktop machine I'm interested in comparing OS X to whatever linux flavor I end up using. Is there an Ubuntu distro for Mac, I wonder. Hrm, I'll need to check that.

A power brick has been located on eBay; once my sister dumps $30 into my PayPal account I'll finish the sale. If both units work, then a second can be procured from the same source. I'm actually looking forward to rehabbing these units... the design is elegant and well thought out. After working with x86-based laptops, finding one so easy to disassemble is a real treat. Of the laptops I've messed with, the only thing that even comes CLOSE is the IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad, which has full disassembly instructions available on the net directly from the manufacturer. Older HP and Compaq laptops are the worst to work on, Gateway 'tops just above them, and the Dells sitting in the middle. I pray I never have to open up my Gateway laptop, because I know what a pain in the ass it is to get apart, and I flat refuse to work on Compaq laptops. Never again the fingerbleeding times.

Wow, I'm a bit wordy today. Must have something to do with actually getting a little sleep over the last couple months. I almost feel human again. OH! Torchwood fans really should take five minutes and giggle over THIS. :)

*thinks* I'm pretty sure that's it for the moment. I need to get back to my cleaning anyway. Ciao!