Geek, then again not
Jun. 18th, 2003 01:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pseydtonneI've been told my entries get too techno-geek for some of my best friends to understand them. I want to talk about what I've been doing, but it's hard to translate every damn sentence. I can't just repress it because that drives me nuts. I'm going to try to say the stuff. I may start a separate, geek-centric journal but I'd rather stick to having this one.
The point of this entry is to explain my emotional state after hitting a wall with a couple theories I was testing. You're warned.
I received an old 350-megahertz Dell tower from the gracious![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lyonesse recently. I slapped in some larger RAM, popped in an old hard drive, installed Slackware 8.1 (a version of Linux) and got it grooving. I made some mistakes -- it needs to boot from a floppy, for example -- but I figure I'll just wipe the drive and start again. It'll only take about 90 minutes to get through that again.
By the way, I'm typing on it right now. I named it Rubicon because it's a minor crossing point on the map of the geek world but it's a change in my opinion of my skills. I've finally started intuiting -- guessing, really -- what will happen when I make certain choices in the installation process. I can see a good few steps ahead about what things will need tweaking and which are total losses.
I keep a notebook of my computer experiments; it's nearly full after a year and a half. I had labeled it "From Red Hat to Root", mostly as a joke. (Non-geeks: Red Hat is a popular, business-friendly distribution of Linux; root is the administrative login name in Unix and the name of ground zero in a Unix-based computer, sort of like C:\.) Since I started this notebook, I've learned about significant differences in Linux distributions and Windows versions. I've become comfortable with the differences and have come to prefer the Linux world. I've become friends with a certain age of computers -- the Pentium line from MMX to early Pentium 3, a range of four to five years.
During all of these experiments, I've improved my time per project. My first task was upgrading my cousin's tower, which I never actually completed but I learned the most from trying. I then started turning over machines fast enough to make money at it. Rubicon will be going to charity (well, it will after I slap in a different hard drive with Windows 2000 on it).
However, things have been changing in the outside world. Pricks run the country, we now regularly create wars because we're bored, entire industries are falling apart (mostly the music one), people are restless from underemployment and a weak economy, millionaires are on trial but billionaires keep getting new laws created in their favor, and Alfred E. Newman DOES make me worry... oh wait, I already mentioned the pricks running the country.
So I've been retreating into these tasks. I've learned to resurrect computers from a simpler time (the late Clinton administration). I feel like I'll solve some riddle if I turn all of these computers into lean new beasts. Perhaps I am delusional.
All of this hit me as I turned on a web browser. It hit me that these beasts are dated, discarded and dejected. I take them in and give them new lives. I do it for the experience points. I hope that each revitalized computer will be an instrument to a renewed nation, more conscious of its true powers and more responsible about its consequences.
I feel better now that I've laid all of this out. I have presented a case for what I enjoy doing. Perhaps I'd rather have a constant string of projects than a real solution because a solved question is a dead one.
Oh, about the laptop (Palimpsest): I got its battery working again! I've finally been able to turn it into a workspace for learning Perl. I may still make something of my desire to learn how to program. After that, I'll learn how to bake a pie.
-strawberry rhubarb, Dante
The point of this entry is to explain my emotional state after hitting a wall with a couple theories I was testing. You're warned.
I received an old 350-megahertz Dell tower from the gracious
lyonesse recently. I slapped in some larger RAM, popped in an old hard drive, installed Slackware 8.1 (a version of Linux) and got it grooving. I made some mistakes -- it needs to boot from a floppy, for example -- but I figure I'll just wipe the drive and start again. It'll only take about 90 minutes to get through that again.By the way, I'm typing on it right now. I named it Rubicon because it's a minor crossing point on the map of the geek world but it's a change in my opinion of my skills. I've finally started intuiting -- guessing, really -- what will happen when I make certain choices in the installation process. I can see a good few steps ahead about what things will need tweaking and which are total losses.
I keep a notebook of my computer experiments; it's nearly full after a year and a half. I had labeled it "From Red Hat to Root", mostly as a joke. (Non-geeks: Red Hat is a popular, business-friendly distribution of Linux; root is the administrative login name in Unix and the name of ground zero in a Unix-based computer, sort of like C:\.) Since I started this notebook, I've learned about significant differences in Linux distributions and Windows versions. I've become comfortable with the differences and have come to prefer the Linux world. I've become friends with a certain age of computers -- the Pentium line from MMX to early Pentium 3, a range of four to five years.
During all of these experiments, I've improved my time per project. My first task was upgrading my cousin's tower, which I never actually completed but I learned the most from trying. I then started turning over machines fast enough to make money at it. Rubicon will be going to charity (well, it will after I slap in a different hard drive with Windows 2000 on it).
However, things have been changing in the outside world. Pricks run the country, we now regularly create wars because we're bored, entire industries are falling apart (mostly the music one), people are restless from underemployment and a weak economy, millionaires are on trial but billionaires keep getting new laws created in their favor, and Alfred E. Newman DOES make me worry... oh wait, I already mentioned the pricks running the country.
So I've been retreating into these tasks. I've learned to resurrect computers from a simpler time (the late Clinton administration). I feel like I'll solve some riddle if I turn all of these computers into lean new beasts. Perhaps I am delusional.
All of this hit me as I turned on a web browser. It hit me that these beasts are dated, discarded and dejected. I take them in and give them new lives. I do it for the experience points. I hope that each revitalized computer will be an instrument to a renewed nation, more conscious of its true powers and more responsible about its consequences.
I feel better now that I've laid all of this out. I have presented a case for what I enjoy doing. Perhaps I'd rather have a constant string of projects than a real solution because a solved question is a dead one.
Oh, about the laptop (Palimpsest): I got its battery working again! I've finally been able to turn it into a workspace for learning Perl. I may still make something of my desire to learn how to program. After that, I'll learn how to bake a pie.
-strawberry rhubarb, Dante
