Hard Drive Failures 'R Us (2003/09/21)
I think this is probably my fifth or sixth hard drive failure this year. And, so far, it looks like I’ll make it through without serious data loss. One of my drives is being fussy about writing blocks, but I can still read from it just fine, so I’m gonna migrate all the stuff to another machine right away. This is getting weird; I guess all that stuff about keeping good backups and keeping an eye out for disk error messages really works.
[read more...]Thanks Microsoft! (2003/09/18)
It’s another Microsoft Virus Day.
[read more...]VeriSign destroys the internet, film at 11 (2003/09/16)
It’s hard to explain how important this is. Most of you won’t notice much; you’ll get a bit more spam today, and maybe your email will be a little slow, but who’d notice? The sysadmins, though… Most of us are noticing.
[read more...]It's like an object-oriented BCPL. (2003/08/09)
Inform is one of the coolest languages ever. It’s a language for writing text adventures.
[read more...]I put gas in my car! (2003/08/06)
I put gas in my car today. This may not seem like it’s news, but it is to me; it’s been just under a full month since I last put gas in my car. This is why I love my hybrid; I went 502.2 miles, with an average milage on this tank of 54.9 miles per gallon. (For the metric folks, that’s about 4.3 l/100km) That’s a low number for my car, but it’s summer, and I hate the heat, so I run the AC all the time.
[read more...]I hate computers. (2003/07/11)
In late May, the hard drive in my Thinkpad failed. So, I ran out and immediately bought a slightly smaller drive, and started copying data around and so on. The old drive could still be used, just only for about 20 minutes at a time, then it would overheat and stop working.
[read more...]I don't understand large numbers. (2003/06/29)
I’m a bit of a math geek by nature, so I use large numbers all the time. Just by squinting a bit and thinking, I was able to estimate the size of the sun within a factor of 2 the other day… Not that this is especially useful. But I’m comfortable with the way numbers stack and interact and modify each other.
[read more...]My new Zaurus (2003/06/07)
I am typing on the tiniest keyboard. Actually, the C700 has a pertty big keyboard, but it’s still tiny compared to a real computer.
[read more...]My love/hate relationship with Apple. (2003/06/01)
I love Apple. Their computers “just work” most of the time. OS X is more stable than anything I’ve ever used except NetBSD and BSD/OS. OS X is pretty, for all that most of the time I’d rather it wasn’t.
[read more...]Building a perfect D20 (2003/05/27)
I have a favorite toy. Well, I have tons of them, but my recent love is GeoMags.
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