This day is not supposed to be happening.

It started with the bright idea that I would try a new experiment. Since Dagobah had an unused graphics card, and the monitor atop Illian was going largely unused, I thought I would attempt to turn Argo into a dual-head by making use of these unused parts.

So this morning (maybe early afternoon?), I opened up Argo, put the second video card in, and fired it up. Initially, the bootup screen came on the wrong monitor. Things were showing up on the screen connected to the PCI card. I wanted to keep the AGP card as the primary display. Soon enough, I found the BIOS setting for that.

Now, with things booted up, it was time to figure out how to make XFree86 make use of both cards. Why not google for it?

Just one problem. When I tried opening my web browser, it couldn't resolve google.com. A little investigation revealed the reason it wasn't resolving: The eth0 device did not exist.

When I tried to load the module for my network card, it said the device didn't exist. Attempting to load the module for the second network card (Argo had been acting as a router not too long ago) produced an even more bizarre result. Kernel panic.

What followed was a long and arduous process of trying out different versions of the modules, several kernels from the 2.4 and 2.6 series that I happened to have lying around, and messing with lilo.conf. But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get either of my network cards to work. (And yes, I took the added video card out as one of the first steps to restore things to the configuration they were in when everything was working.)

At this point, I began to suspect hardware failure. Maybe some nasty static had screwed things up when I had put the video card in? Still, it seemed slightly odd that both network cards would be frying out at the same time.

After taking out each network card one at a time, and trying them both separately with no success, it was time for the next step. I tried shutting down Illian and put Illian's cards into Argo. (With appropriate drivers compiled.)

It STILL paniced and had a freak fest about it. This was beyond natural. One or 2 cards going bad I could handle, but others that had been on a separate machine? No. It wasn't the network cards. Since I had tried several kernels and modules, it probably wasn't that either. A knawing pit began to grow in my stomach. No. Not Argo's motherboard.

I put Illian's cards back into Illian, and sure enough, they worked just fine.

More attempts to coax Argo into accepting network hardware failed. Then it got worse. I tried to play and ogg file. Now the sound card wasn't recognized. It had worked an hour before, even as I had been recompiling a kernel to try to fix the network problems.

At this point, my best guess is that somehow, when I was putting the video card in, I unleashed some static into Argo's PCI subsystem, which resulted in a cascading (sometimes intermittent) failure. I hate this.

I suppose it would be stating the obvious to say that financially, this couldn't have come at a worse time. I can't afford to be shelling out for a new motherboard right now. Hell, I really shouldn't have even gone to Best Buy earlier this week to get my "must have" entertainment items. (That's not to say I regret anything, or would act differently in a redo, but you know how it is.) Anyway...

Right now, I'm typing this at Illian, ssh'd into buildmeasite. (I manually transcribed my rambling script, so I could post content directly.)

At this point, I'm feeling a little too weary to do any serious planing for my next step, much less take any further action. I've screwed things up enough for one day. Possibilities that spring to mind right now include provisionally relocating my center of operations to Illian (which would, at minimum, involve a hard drive transplant, and possibly other peripherals depending on how much functionality I need); another thought would be to get a new board on credit (ick, not liking that one); or maybe if I shop around I could find a bargain basement used deal on ebay or elsewhere in meatspace.

But any of these courses of action involve time, energy, and risk. Right now, I'm all tapped out.

Yesterday, I made bean dip, and watched the first disc of Two Towers with my parents (neither of them had seen it yet). Tonight, we're watching disc 2. (Since they didn't have the stamina to finish it all in one evening.)

Maybe I have no life to speak of. Maybe my computer is falling apart in front of me. Maybe the future looks bleak and pale as the snow-drenched sky outside today. But dammit, I intend to enjoy what I do have.

End.