A month in the wilderness

Soon after I returned from Champaign last month, my workstation went on the blink citing a 'thermal error'. The problem had to be reported to Dell and luckily because the machine was still within its three-year warranty period, it was fixed by replacing the motherboard. The machine broke down on 21 September and was finally back in order today. In this month I had to go back to my old Toshiba laptop and, more importantly, to Linux after a long hiatus. It was hard at first trying to live a spartan life -- 256MB of RAM instead of 768MB, ~200MB of free hard disk space as opposed to numerous gigabytes strewn around across various partitions, an antique RedHat 9 installation on an 800x600 resolution screen with the odd pixel or two going blind every day and a grinding, whirring underbelly that sniped every time a new browser window needed to be opened. Passwords were back, and each day a new experiment with the fingering technique would be launched into so that I could handle a glass of water on the one hand and tippy-toe into my workspace on the other -- puns and mixed metaphors galore. The AccuPoint pointer device that is embedded like a bead went bald with the three years of constant, rugged friction against the whorls of fingertips and deaf with all the prodding; now back in calling. Single Ctrl-Alt keys, a cracked-open headphone jack, defunct video support, metal scraping off the exteriors: four years ago, it used to be the newest thing in the market.

December 2004 - March 2005

October 2004 - November 2004

July 2004 - September 2004

May 2004 - June 2004

April 2004

January 2004 - March 2004

October 2003 - January 2004

July 2003 - October 2003

May 2003 - June 2003

April 2003

January 2003 - April 2003

2002

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