While millions of clueless Windows users spread their viruses and worms, I mostly stand around on the sidelines and yawn. Except when one of them throws a bunch of crap at (or through, as the case may be with mail servers) at a box I have root on. Then I... Well, actually I yawn at that too. Ho hum.

As of a few minutes ago, Illian is now the newly christened router for the Laser Fortress. Took me long enough. The tale goes something like this:

Day 1 (Sometime last week): "Hmmm, it would probably be a good idea to set Illian up as the router before I leave for the gathering next week." Bitscape brings his monitor, looks at Illian and realizes all his spare power cords are all still over at the "other place." Oh well, next time then.

Day 2: "Power cord. Check!" Bitscape plugs in the power cord, examines Argo's power strip, and realizes there are no spare outlets. All my power strips are also at the other place. Don't want to move Illian. Don't want to unplug anything. Add power strip to the non-existent list of things to bring on my trip tomorrow. Oh, and a network cable would be nice too.

Day 3: Power strip, power cord, and network cable. All set and ready to go. Powered it up successfully, employ trial and error to find a bootable kernel in lilo's list (hint: it ain't the default), and a login prompt eventually appears. After a dozen or so tries attempting to remember/guess the semi-obvious root password from back in the days when Illian functioned as the makeshift bmas dev server, I finally got it right. "Ok, that's my accomplishment for the day! Let's play some Kohan!"

Day 4: Examination of Illian's rear reveals only 1 network card. Hmmmmm... A router with 1 network card. Now that would be an interesting setup. TODO on next trip: Scavange a network card from the spare hardware repository formerly known as Dagobah. Meanwhile, I use the existing network card to do odds and ends like grab and compile the latest stable kernel, apt-get upgrade, and make especially sure ssh is up to date.

Day 5: Ancient network card #1 doesn't work so well. ISA cards without jumpers from the early so-called "plug and play" days suck. After a few guesses at the address and IRQ, and a failed attempt to use isapnp to detect it, I decide to just use Dagobah's other card next time. (If I had wanted to badly enough, I probably could have gotten it working. The thing has a DOS-based setup utility, which I amazingly still have around. but that would have required a floppy drive and dos boot disc, both of which seemed more laborious than just getting the other card.)

Day 6: Put in Dagobah's other network card, and everything pretty much works. Yay.

I've also now got Dagobah's floppy and 40gig hard drive in Argo. More supplementary storage. Yum.

Meanwhile, in a disturbing turn of events, during the course of typing this rambling, the "b" key on Argo's keyboard has ceased to function. It started to go intermittent, and then pretty much quit working entirely. Seemingly all in the span of a few short minutes.

So as a temporary measure, I now find myself resorting to copying and pasting the letter "b" from another terminal whenever I need to use it. And getting frustrated and swearing horrily whenever I try to go ba-ba-back a word in vi. Grrrrrr.

Nooooooooo!

I love this keyboard. Replacing it and buying a new one is unthinkable, not only because I'm jobless and poor at the moment, but this type of keyboard, the penguin keyboard with solid design and clickey keys which you can't seem to find anywhere these days, is no longer produced. Dammit, I should have bought a dozen of them back in 2000. If only I had known....

Speaking of broken stuff getting replaced, my cell phone went dead last week. This one lasted only 6 months. Since I still had the best buy service plan, I finally got around to taking it in today. Well, they couldn't replace it with the exact same thing because that model was discontinued, but they gave me the price I had paid as a discount toward another model of my choosing. Damn, cell phone prices have gone up over the past couple years!

This time, I got a motorola model. We'll see how long it lasts. The jury is still out on whether I prefer it to the not-so-trusty but featureful old panasonic.

So I get the new one, and naturally, there's a boatload of voicemail messages from none other than scottgalvin.com. Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating just a bit. ;)

Also $mentor[0] has been trying to get in touch. This time, he didn't leave his number on the voicemail. Murphey's law. Doh. The only place I had the number recorded was in the old phone. That means I'll either have to wait til he calls again, or try for an impromptu unannounced visit at a time he may or may not be at home. I really should backup these numbers somewhere else.

Now I think I'll watch anothter Alias episode or 2, and/or see what I can do to aid this poor ailing keyoard. (I'm sick of pasting that letter I can't type.)