I kicked off sunday with the assignment (again) - but for once had good clarity. After two days of working on it and many more of ramming the info into brain, it must’ve finally sorted itself out. Reeled off paras faster than a speeding speed-person. Good- because gene’s family came over,a nd gave yak a present, on account of it being his birthday the day after the next. They gave me some chinese herbs and a little window box thingo to plant them in.
Which is luverly, but there was something clicking away in head which immediately realised that these things could neither be plugged into the back of the case, nor into Juggernaut’s motherboard.
So herbs is a pretty cool zen thing; will have to figure out how to use them in cooking.
It’s a long way for them to come, seems to piss them off that it’s so far. Ususally it’s us driving to visit them.
After a bit more procrastro - got assignment finished, and still had time for a bath. Was nice to feel a bit free from the pressures of study - if only for a day or so. First exam on the 20th.
Monday my mum came over, which was nice. It’s closer than it is to gene’s folks, but we still don’t make the effort that much. I really should get over there more often. Mum brought me some of dad’s jumpers which she thought I could use, which is true, but it was a pretty heavy trip. They still all smelled like dad (I’d never even realised dad had a smell) and particular the one he used to wear while pottering aroun the property has a really hardcore vibe. Saying that I would be ‘proud’ to wear it doesn’t sound right, ‘grateful’ I think. And even more wound in is that grandma knitted it for him, and grans jumpers are ace. I lost one she made for me, and that was a sad day. Nothing like clothes that someone (particularly family members) has actually made for you.
Am also grateful that i get along with my ma well. Gene gets strssed by hers sometimes.
And then somtime after mum left…
SOMEHOW SATAN GOT BEHIND ME
For Ralph Wigum it comes in the form of a leprichaun (I know it’s not spelt right) on the shoulder telling him to, “Burn Stuff”. For me it’s a deceptively well-meaninged, confidence-inspiring voice inside my head that says stuff like, “Sure you’ll be able to re-arrange the partitions on the hard drive! No Problem! Afterall, all tthe important stuff is in the /home directory, which is seperately partitioned. Now my friend, what you do is psss-wss-wss psss-wss-wwss….”, it whispers to me.
It told me that I could wipe the /root partition, and then put a 5gig VFAT partition at the start of the disk, thus Woodnose could be installed, thus I would get to use my paralell-ported scanner again. The voice seemed to have it all worked out — I’d get woodnose working, then reinstall red hat as a clean istall, and during partitioning I’d be able to pick up the original /home directory again. The one with all my time-consumingly d/loaded .MP3s, and all my homework, and important lecture note emails, and all the Opera bookmarks, and the other stuff that took ages to d/load like OpenOffice.
But something went wrong - I couldn’t get woodnose to install properly, and when I did, red hat (and Mandrake for that matter) said that the partition table was corrupted and the whole dam thing needed to be wiped.
The voice told me there was no turning back, and that I’d changed things so much already that i might as well wipe the whole thing because then I could at least get the damn scanner running, as was the original intention. The voice failed to remind me of how much i’d be wiping.
But even when I did that it wouldn’t work - which is fucken unbelievable, because I’ve done it before.
Just decided to cut my losses and reinstall red hat afresh, and vow never to bother with woodnose again. And right now am embarked on an extremely long list of stuff to re-d/load, starting with red hat updates - the messy way because ‘up2date’ thinks I’m screwing them.
Little Napoleon Wins At Laguna Seca
Stayed up late watching CART last night. Kind of an average race; there’s very little passing done on that track. Georgous scenery though … ah well maybe not georgous, but it’s got a feel -Monterey, near Carmel on the West coast, south of San Fran. MMMm - and i could almost feel the warm of the sun though the screen.
Again, couldn’t help feeling peeved at the pathetic attempt at commentary by these channel ten doofuses. O Paul Page + Parker Johnstone where are you now?!
And Newman/Haas ain’t my favorite team by a long shot. Haas is very old school — his boys finish one and two and the first thing he does after they jump out of the cars is shove these whopping big ceee-gars in their cakeholes, just like his.
I always hope that their 2nd team car “the icecream van” crashes - hohohahaho. It’s sponsored by Eli Lily - makers of prozac, and it’s driven by that tosser Fittipaldi. Always makes me think of that Homer line regarding his home-made prozac, “needs more icecream”.
So am a tad out of kilter this morning due to the time-burn late last night, but it’s my birthday so what the hell. Mama gave me some dollars, which is sweet because it can go to machine projects; the one eventuating being a domain name on a paid host, which should happen fairly soon I think!
And gene (ah she’s so thoughtful) gave me a book about birds in the local area, which should be interesting, and some postcards from `star wars-tacko the clowns’, and some highly appropriate (not to mention lovely and soft) yak’s wool socks, which I’m wearing right now! :^)
