A New Member of the Crowd
Apologies for the rambling post about my experiences which have no useful bearing on anyone. I was going to right about the progress of the Alternative Vote Bill through the lords, but haven't had the time to read up on what's happened in the last 48 hours.
Some people think I'm weird because I name my computers. Others think I'm weird for giving them 'given names'1. The correct people just know I'm weird, and think that naming computers may, or may not, be related.
Regardless, I've spent the day messing with computer equipment in a lot more physical way than I have done in a number of years, with a lot of help from one of my flat mates, who knows the layout of both of the boxes I was working on. There've been ups and downs, but 36 hours into the install, I appear to have a set of roughly working machines.
Naturally, it didn't start easy with one of the delivery companies being unable to find the flat, and returning some of the key components, such as the motherboard and PSU, to their depot, forcing me to venture out of the comforts of Zones 1 and 2, into the wilderness of London's Zone 3. I must say, I was rather nervous carrying a large amount of computer equipment in the dark in an area I didn't know, especially as it wouldn't all fit in the hiking bag I'd taken with me, so I was carrying a shiny motherboard box which gleamed with expensive. However, it all got safely here, and I finally began the long process of the installation.
Now, if I'd just been assembling a new machine, things would have gone all right. However, I'd decided to put the newer, larger hard drive into my media server, which meant copying all the data from one drive to the other. I got the new machine half assembled while this was happening, when my wonderful flatmate turned up and pointed out a couple of things which I'd missed entirely with regards to the exciting realm of cable management. Once the new machine was assembled and tested, minus hard drive, I jollied off to the pub for an hour2, and then for a walk around central London3, before arriving home to the standard levels of weird that accumulate in a house full of Imperial College students.
Now, in this process so far, a couple of things had eluded me. Firstly, that the method I'd chosen for switching the media server's hard disks of installing in OS on the new one, then copying files across, had the wonderful flaw that the installed OS wrote the master boot record to the first disk, and I'd forgotten to swap them round. This, however, didn't become apparent until after I'd removed the old hard drive. This, however, was made all the more confusing when the BIOS on the server appeared to fail.
So, I quickly checked that the main data partition on the new hard drive was there and readable, and decided to come back to that problem later. Thing took a turn for the worse, after getting a running OS on the new desktop suddenly changed to a non-booting machine. An hour and a half of disassembly and reassembly eventually determined that one of the RAM sticks had become unseated. In the end, it was almost 24 hours between leaving for the packages and being able to play Portal4, a most disappointing time.
It took a little while longer, and a CMOS reset, to get the server talking again. And even now, there are still a range issues coming form that end, included no authentication support from the smb daemon, the problem I've spent a chunk of the evening bashing my head against.
So, how does this relate to my comment about naming the machines. Well, in many ways, it's more than just names. Quite a few of my friends have run with the idea, and some of them have almost been given personalities. And I felt that it's about time I introduced them:
- Chloë is the machine I've had longest, but it not the oldest. A rather chunky Dell laptop with a tendency to under perform, the name was originally chosen to annoy an ICT support group whose software and scripting couldn't handle the diaeresis
- Eliza is physically the oldest machine - a P4 desktop re-purposed as a server, weighing in light even for an mini-ATX. Named after both the chat bot and the character from the Neal Stevenson book5, and never faltering or failing - until I try and install a nice upgrade and all the sulking begins....
- Piccolo isn't really mine, but seems to live in my room these days. An EEE-pc, the original name of which I can't remember, but was installed as Piccolo for a trip to Dorset as a web-cam system for Imperial's Musical Theatre society - the name being a play on the instrument, and the machine's tiny size.
- Kerry the Kindle is, most surprisingly, a Kindle. The name was suggested by "Max" Dave and, in lieu of me picking one myself, has become the official name. There's not really much more to say about the Kindle...
- Alicia is the name of the newly assembled desktop. The name was picked in the end by a number of ideas bouncing around between people and one sort of sticking - someone was suggesting finding a pattern in the initials, and at some point the idea of making the initials spell 'cake', with baking as one of my other favourite activities6. the final step was merely the someone's suggestion of picking a slightly more exciting name than Alice7.
- 1 ↑ As opposed to just random words of syllables
- 2 ↑ A most peculiar thing for me to do, mainly because I don't drink
- 3 ↑ Which, because I was wearing very new shoes, my feet are still aching from
- 4 ↑ which I still haven't quite completed, due to crashes. Also, the last level is absurdly long...
- 5 ↑ Well, any of the 4 which are the same book over and over again
- 6 ↑ An even harder one to blog interestingly about
- 7 ↑ Which could be a reference to any number of machines, but I would always think of Alice in Greg Bear's "Moving Mars"
And that's the lot, and lovely they are too :)