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evening of much toy action
Nov. 16th, 2001 12:29 amFirst, the SMC Barricade came in the mail -- this is a cute little hub/NAT box/firewall/print server that we got to share the DSL for when my computer arrived. Second, my computer arrived, delivered magically in our front hallway.
The computer all fit together and booted up happily, if you call WinXP happiness. It comes up with a hypersaturated background of rolling grassy hills and blue sky and little fluffy clouds -- I'm thinking Teletubbies. The UI has got sort of the swollen lickable look of MacOS X, but everything's brighter and bigger and swimmier; it's like you're plastered. And the start menu has new advertising piled on and is the size of Cleopatra's pleasure barge. Fortunately for old fogies, you can turn all this stuff off. And I have to say, the fast context-switching between users is k-rad.
I picked this keyboard because it was clicky. They've invented even more keys since I last saw a new keyboard: Wake, Sleep, and Power are where Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause used to be, and have displaced them downwards. I wouldn't care about any of this, except that the Ins-Del-Home-End-PgUp-PgDn cluster has been driven downwards too. I keep toggling scroll lock instead of moving the cursor.
I needed network to start dumping emacs and a shell and a solid bin directory on here, so I did the netreg dance and waited for the update to propagate.
While I waited, I dumped some failed nasty cider to clear out the carboy, and racked the current batch from primary. First taste, I thought it had gone nasty too, and I was sad -- this was fresh-pressed cider from a mix of good apples. But sipping some more, I decided the nasty tang was some sulfide, which'll outgas, and some funk from letting it sit too long on the lees, which should balance out after a while. It's also tart and quite dry. Maybe with half of it I'll try sorbating and adding some fresh cider to the secondary, for sweetness and fruitiness.
When netreg had done its thing, I dug out the Immensely Long Cable and tried talking straight to the DSL modem. That worked. So I hooked in the SMC, which was pleasantly trivial to set up. Now everybody's got network, and I'm typing this from my machine, in the library.
The computer all fit together and booted up happily, if you call WinXP happiness. It comes up with a hypersaturated background of rolling grassy hills and blue sky and little fluffy clouds -- I'm thinking Teletubbies. The UI has got sort of the swollen lickable look of MacOS X, but everything's brighter and bigger and swimmier; it's like you're plastered. And the start menu has new advertising piled on and is the size of Cleopatra's pleasure barge. Fortunately for old fogies, you can turn all this stuff off. And I have to say, the fast context-switching between users is k-rad.
I picked this keyboard because it was clicky. They've invented even more keys since I last saw a new keyboard: Wake, Sleep, and Power are where Print Screen, Scroll Lock, and Pause used to be, and have displaced them downwards. I wouldn't care about any of this, except that the Ins-Del-Home-End-PgUp-PgDn cluster has been driven downwards too. I keep toggling scroll lock instead of moving the cursor.
I needed network to start dumping emacs and a shell and a solid bin directory on here, so I did the netreg dance and waited for the update to propagate.
While I waited, I dumped some failed nasty cider to clear out the carboy, and racked the current batch from primary. First taste, I thought it had gone nasty too, and I was sad -- this was fresh-pressed cider from a mix of good apples. But sipping some more, I decided the nasty tang was some sulfide, which'll outgas, and some funk from letting it sit too long on the lees, which should balance out after a while. It's also tart and quite dry. Maybe with half of it I'll try sorbating and adding some fresh cider to the secondary, for sweetness and fruitiness.
When netreg had done its thing, I dug out the Immensely Long Cable and tried talking straight to the DSL modem. That worked. So I hooked in the SMC, which was pleasantly trivial to set up. Now everybody's got network, and I'm typing this from my machine, in the library.
