sweasel.com

I just couldn’t stand to see a Weasel post with no comments in it.

I don’t see how Weasel can sleep on all those clipped-off connections on that proto-board. I would think they’d prick and sting a bit. Could he get geek-poisoning, or sumpin?

I’ve always maintained that IBM machines require blood sacrifice before you’re allowed to mess with the hardware. I’ve always barked my knuckles on a circuit board going in. Damn, those things are sharper’n coral reefs.

I’m kind of hoping the easy wifi option doesn’t work, McGoo. I’d love to have a goofy, weasel-soldered, mysterious mess hanging off the back of my machine. You ought to see my soldering work! Though I did once successfully Frankenstein an exercise bike to a mouse, creating the Doomercycle. Yes, it damn well did work!

The Doomercycle sounds fiendishly evil.

I like it.

You could build an ass-kicker phased-array wifi antenna, and it could definitely be made to look seriously messy and hacked. But it will be some work and involve sharp tools and supplies you may not have. Depends on how much of a hardware (rf) tinkerer you are. You do have insurance? Will?

I was just headed Net-hunting for tech references for phased arrays and array patterns for you. They’re really quite simple, and they do kick serious range-butt when necessary.

I’ve always had a running joke/policy that the job’s not done until some blood has been shed. It’s just so damned true!

I once owned a subscription to Nuts and Volts. I understood about 5% of it. I’ve only ever put stuff together from kits; I frankly had no idea what I was doing.

Even the soldered version of the Doomercycle didn’t work. It was only when I took a mouse apart and let the spokes of the wheel substitute for the tiny spokes of the mouse wheel that I got a workable result.

By the way, thanks to the GRUB loader, I have officially turned my laptop into a paperweight today. This happened on the last machine I put Linux on, which is why I’ve been putting this off for so long.

I hope you backed up your LT.

I’ve played with one version of linux (it was the version that has a “university of —–” attached to it – UC Berkeley?)) and didn’t care for it. I get the impression that linux is for folks that like to fiddle and tinker around inside their PC. I stopped doing that with W98. They keep movin’ shit and burying things deeper.

Prolly FreeBSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) UNIX. And backups are for pussies.

I’ve run Linux before. I like it, but I usually give it up after a few months because I’m too lazy for it. But Mister Gates, he keeps hitting my buttons. Like, my harddrive is dying in this machine, so Sandy Claws brung me a new one at Christmas. I loaded Windows on it, and it said, “sorry pardner…you’ve loaded this one on too many machines. Give us more money.”

I could ghost it over — and I might — but what with Vista coming, it seemed like a good time to try Linux again. Of course, I meant to do a dual boot but…it didn’t turn out that way.

Oh, well. I don’t keep anything important on this machine.

I hear and agree – except for the backup assertion. MS policies suck in the re-load department. They act like they still own your software. How rude!

(Here comes the sob story) My HD crashed, big-time, about 3 years ago. What stung especially hard was that the crash was my own damned fault, totally.

Bottom line – I lost some personal journal entries (6 months worth), a pile of writing and edits on writing, a bunch of mileage/cost data for my li’l sports car, and some precious wave files that it had taken me many YEARS to collect, edit, and exerpt. I loved those silly little wave files. Gone. Pfooie! Kaput! I cannot believe I didn’t have them backed up! At all!

Might not seem like much, but the shit was important to me!

It took about 2-3 days before I really got to the “Oh, Noooooo!” stage. It didn’t finish hitting me for a month.

If I’d thought about it beforehand, I would probably shrugged it off. It was the sudden, irrevocable knowledge that all this was GONE that hit hardest of all.

Now I back up the first week of every month. No matter what. I have 34 dvd-r discs to prove it. Another next week.

I will never lose more than 30 days worth again! Never. For important stuff, I do an immediate backup to a usb flash dongle-thingy someone gave me.

It WAS the freeBSD linux I installed. Reminded me of W3.0 (before the fixes). It’s one saving grace was that it uninstalled perfectly.

Ummm… Mr McGoo. Please, whatever you do, don’t entrust your valuables to DVDs. Even with the best of ’em the technology is simply not sufficiently reliable to rely on for anything but temporary backup.

A good quality external HD is a far better bet.

Me? I’m paranoid. Photos and business data are stored on three separate HDs with backup CDs as well.

People laugh…

Uncle Badger,
Advice noted. Thanks. I figured that since I’m backing up to a new dvd-r every month I’d have a good chance of preserving “most” of the stuff. I do believe HDs are waaaay more reliable in terms of long-term retention. Its just that an external one hasn’t fallen into my lap recently.

I am putting precious stuff onto zip discs, for what its worth. I’ve never had one of those fail, so far…

Where’s Weasel, we wondersss, yes we wondersss? If those Cootymonkeys over in training got him, I’m gonna be chagrined. They could very well be “diversity training” him, or – god forbid – “Corporate Culture & Nuance” programming him as we speak.

“Crosby & Juran Quality training”! Eeek! He could die.

You know, McGoo, somehow I don’t think you can ‘diversity train’ a weasel.

I know I wouldn’t like to try. I mean… the teeth… the teeth…

Tell that to the Training folks.

I hope they get rabies, or a rash that itches in an embarrassing place, or sumpin.