I am happy and contented once more; my new CPU and memory finally came, and there was much rejoicing. A productive hour was spent putting everything in the New Case of Ardith, after which came the Initial Benchmarks and Playtesting. More playtesting to follow tomorrow... er, today. After all, the only way to really see how it feels is to play Descent 3.
I also started on my summer reading program today. Mostly sci-fi, with a little mystery and C.S. Lewis thrown in to round things out a bit. Also hoping to get through a book on chaos theory. Having got a total of 9 books, it should last me all of a week and a half. Hopefully I'll get my shipment of 50+ older books which I borrow from a friend at church soon. She owns upwards of 10,000; she goes to all the local used book sales and picks up boxes at a time. I don't know how many I've been through, but there are a lot left to go. They lean towards historical fiction and war stories, but it's possible to find just about any genre in her stash.
WHERE ARE THE REST OF MY PARTS!!!
Oh, sorry about that. As if I expected the USPS to get them here inside of a week anyway.
It's probably just as well I don't own a shotgun; I'd be parked outside the post office right now.
My plans for tomorrow are threefold: for starters, I'm not getting up until 11:30 or 12:00. I'm also not doing any caulking whatsoever, and thus will not be lying on my back in an inch of accumulated dust and paint chips trying to keep my arms from falling off while holding a caulking gun over my head. Thirdly, I plan to spend most of my waking hours playing Schizm. Yes, I'm a hopeless addict as far as Myst-like games are concerned. Live with it. It's part of who I am. At any rate, should be a good day all around.
Obviously, my little brother needs some serious lessons on the Ettiquette of Dialup Sharing. Looks like it's time for Ardith to figure out how to implement priorities and bandwidth-limiting on the Home Network That Will Not Die. I'm kind of proud of my servers, though. And they are definitely mine. Every couple of months, I keep saying it's about time for Jason to take over admin duties. And every couple of months I end up implementing something new that only I can take care of. Yes, this is the same Jason who decides downloading a 51M file is perfectly feasible on dialup and thus sucks every last drop of bandwidth from everyone else for two days straight. Drat the boy, anyway.
Oh, and unfortunately, my last package was only sent off today. Thus, the all-important new CPU and memory will not be arriving until sometime next week. I think I can manage to stay alive until then - maybe.
New bits have arrived. As I am at the moment still hypnotized by the new monitor and speakers, no big updates for right now.
Also, I'm still waiting on a few parts. *sigh*
Yes! I have finally reached my goal in life.
Someone found my site when searching for "setting up a linux file server" in Google. In fact, my site was only three from the top. So, for those of you wondering how to go about this exciting task, allow me to refer you to a few places.
HOWTOs:
SMB-HOWTO
If you need to know how to set up a basic network: Home-Network-mini-HOWTO
But the underlying principles are:
1. Get your basic network put together (allowing you to ping the server from the client machines, etc)
2. Get and install Samba. It comes on virtually all distros, if it's not already installed, install it.
3. Set up the smb.conf file in /etc. (/etc/samba on Debian)
4. Test your new file server. If it doesn't work, go back to step 3, read the samba documentation and try again.
5. If all else fails, get in touch with me at (ahoyt at myrealbox dot com).
Look, more people with blogs! You'd almost think I have a lot of friends, wouldn't you.
Hmmm.... one of these days I'm going to need to put a few comments up about these people. Just to let you know who to stay away from, etc.
This has been a pretty good day. For starters, I finally got around to ordering the new computer parts which I'll be horribly in debt to my parents for until I make enough money to repay them. Should only take a month, though. I consider it at least as good an investment as the number of books which the same amount would buy at the LU bookstore.
For those that are interested, here are the basic specs:
Refurbished 17" monitor - my 15" has been good to me, but it's time to pass it on. The new one looks quite decent; completely flat CRT screen, will do 1600x1200 @ 60Hz.
AMD XP 2000+ and requisite motherboard and DDR memory. It's definitely time to move beyond the 500MHz K6-II.
New speakers. Something semi-decent this time; not 5.1, but at least I now have a subwoofer.
Wireless keyboard and mouse. The desks in Gilbert demand it. And yes, that is a valid excuse.
New case. The 250W power supply just doesn't cut it any more, and it's just as cheap to buy a whole new case. Besides, it looks prettier. Slightly. In a sort of reminiscently-I-Mac sort of way.
All that should keep me happier for a while. That and the new boxed set of Tolkien books I got as a late birthday present today. Those immediately went on the top shelf of the bookcase here in my room, and all the younger siblings were informed of their imminent death should they so much as touch them. I do want to keep them in decent condition, after all.
For those of you unfortunate enough not to read User Friendly regularly, and thus notice the sometimes amusing link of the day, I bring this link. The history of the Internet as it ought to be told.
It has been brought to my attention that I have neglected to tell you all the model of my new little hand-held toy. It's a Palm IIIc, and has brought much joy and gladness to my life. Extremely useful for dumping Gutenberg e-texts on for reading away from my computer.
Today, I again realized the wonder that is driving a small car with a stick-shift on back country roads. One of the nicer perks of being home is getting to drive the car again.
Okay, I lied. I'll go to bed in a few minutes, I promise, but first:
This really can't be true, can it? I mean, seriously...
I'm always amused to no end at the interesting search terms which will bring up my site. According to Google, I am the foremost authority on math courses for cardiologists. I should definitely make use of this fact. Perhaps a book deal or two; they say one should always write in one's area of expertise.
I've also discovered a new source of inspiration. While I'm sure all of you will be rather disappointed in me, I'd never read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". Having spent the last few days listening to the audio version, I will hasten to assure you that I have seen the error of my ways, and am a complete repentant. Haven't finished it yet, but I've been truly amazed at the sheer randomness and hilarity of it. I'm definitely caught, hook, line, and sinker. Perhaps the fishing pole, as well.
I should probably shut this off and go to bed. My poor sister is lying across the room, trying to sleep with a cold, and I'm sure the pale glow of my computer monitor isn't helping her any. May your slumber be restful and your nightmares be few.
Somebody was my 1000th visitor today. Somebody still at school, running Linux, at 10:58pm, apparently. You know who you are, and no, you don't get a prize. I'm a poor college student, remember?
And yes, I have had my computer put together and properly networked for days now. And instead of posting, I've been doing enjoyable things like sleeping in, eating decent food, sleeping in some more, etc. Great stuff. It's good to be back home, or at least it's good right now. Obviously, my report card hasn't come in yet.
But, I'd forgotten about all the little things I enjoy about being home: watching Voyager with my sister and introducing her to some of the mainstays of the Star Trek universe while also propounding my theory on the existence of the Star Trek Plot Generating Machine. Picking out new bits for my computer with my dad. Fixing things and actually having them work afterwards. Having little children look up to me and hanging on every word I say as if it's the gospel truth.
And then the amusing things: having to talk to everyone in chruch the first Sunday I'm back or else they'll feel bad for weeks. Noticing that my sleep schedule is a full 4 hours off of everybody else's.
There are not-so-nice things, as well, of course. Realizing my dad's really not better at all, and unless things change drastically, he's going to be an invalid in a few years. If he's not already. What's worst I think, is that no one seems to notice. They think it's normal that he sleeps until 11am every morning, goes to bed at 9pm, and he can no longer work, since it just wears him out too much. They've gotten used to it, I guess. I haven't yet, and I'm scared.
I can remember helping my dad work on the house; putting up frame walls for the breezeway, cutting siding for the same breezeway, up on the garage roof all day putting up shingles. The most fun in the world, and I'm afraid my littlest siblings will never see my dad like that.
I'm not sure I can take all this being strong business anymore.
Anyway, I need to go to sleep. Can you tell?
Ardith has returned to the land of many computers and little dial-up connection. Having first managed to catch a nasty cold. At any rate, I'm home safe and sound. There probably won't be a lot of updating until I get my dad to run another cat-5 cable upstairs, though. As it is, I have to use my sister's computer whenever I want to check my email, etc. Grrr...
Thanks to my kind-hearted cousin, I have some new toys, though. Radio tuner card and a color Palm. Sorry, don't feel like running upstairs and checking the model name at the moment. I foresee many entertaining hours in the future.
Time to stick a few more holes in the head of the pink pig sitting on my monitor:
One (1) for having suite inspections at 12:30 today.
Two (2) more for having to move everything under the sinks into my room because it's my roommate's.
One (1) for still not having got around to packing my stuff up.
One (1) for having to leave in two days.
