Selene is da bomb of computers

Selene, my first-born computer (in other words, the first computer I ever built), is DA BOMB. She's awesome, stable, beautiful, rugged, powerful, and just plain... wait, I already mentioned she was awesome...

I built her in 2001 after going to an A+ cert class (never did get certified though, I should prolly do that at some point huh?) and still remember the sweat and anticipation as I flipped her switch on for the first time. Oh, the nervous ears attached to my head, perking up to every little sound, unsure of whether the sounds were good or bad! Well, other than a failed power supply a few months ago, she's had an awesome track record as far as hardware goes.

Selene is a Pentium III, 866MHz, running 256MB of SD-RAM. Her motherboard is an Intel D815EEA. I've got two 40GB Maxtor 7200RPM hard drives in her, the main drive of which is sandwiched in between the floppy and the other hard drive and wow does it get hot. It's been running hot for too long perhaps, and I've known the drive has been on its way out for about a year, but still it hangs on despite the occasional whistle it emits. Not even a bad sector. Some of my geek friends poo-poo Maxtor's hard drives, but this baby's 3.5 years old and even with the treatment I give it, it's still working, so poo-poo on them.

She's got Windows 98se, the original operating system I put on her (although I admit I've reinstalled it several times). The last reinstall of this o/s was ... well, it was probably over six months ago. I typically give her a complete overhaul every six months or so, and sure enough she's begun to have some issues. I've only got a gazillion programs on her, after all. But then last night someone mentioned that HIS 98se has been running flawlessly for years with not reinstall. I got a bit miffed inside. Never cared about reinstalling before, but suddenly I'm like, hmph, maybe I should look for other solutions, don't really feel like reinstalling everything and respecifying all the paths and such to the program files. Ugh, no, not again, not when I'm so busy these days. So I scrounged around in my start menu and found the all-familiar Norton Utilities 2002.

This found 18 errors in Windows and fixed 17 of them. It said the errors could cause programs to run improperly, or Windows could crash. Nah, really? So I let it do its thing. So far so good, no more crashes, but it was only half an hour ago that I did that. Selene hasn't been heavily hit by my multitasking yet. Currently she's only got two instances of Mozilla, Winamp, and Trillian going, along with the usual load of pgp, AVG, Logitech and ZA. That is hardly anything compared to what she's USED to. I'm probably one of the worst multitaskers there is.

So, I did do a scan of Selene for viruses, fragmentation, spyware, and general disk errors like bad sectors and file screwups. NOTHING. No spyware, no viruses, as usual. I've only had the one virus and I was the idiot who went against all my laws and put it there AND cleaned it up myself within an hour. People at work told me that with my heavy internet usage I should have a tonne of spyware, and that Webroot's SpySweeper would be far better than AdAware in removing the things I'm not seeing [because I'm using the wrong spyware remover]. So I took their advice and installed SpySweeper. It found nothing more than a piece of an office suite I used on occasion. I did some research and it wasn't even spyware! There was NOTHING on her. Nothing. And no, ladies and gentlemen, you do NOT have to accept cookies in order to view every website. There are a few that are idiots and require such measures, but we all have the option of refusing to go to those sites, right? I accept very few cookies despite what the people at work tried to tell me. They aren't the ones using Mozilla. I am.

Selene is a workhorse. She's gone through more crap than I can shake a stick at, and it was all my fault, too, yet still she seems to respect me enough to continue beating the living daylights out of the electricity that flows lovingly through her circuitry. I get ticked when she begins slowing down and having issues, but I always know that she'll come out of it okay because I'm her mom and I make sure that when she starts complaining, I fix what's wrong. I love her sooooooo much it almost hurts.

I'm beginning to sound like a guy and his truck... maybe worse... female techies are probably far worse, actually...

(((((((((((selene)))))))))))) love you, baby. Oh yeah, and I love you, too, Raven, and you, Darin, and Lizzie, and Ian, and Beastie, and Axcelibur, and Scotty of course... ::happy sigh::

~nvnohi

Yep, I'm a geek. And an antisocial one at that.

I'm sitting behind a computer while some people in the other room are having themselves a ball, laughing it up and talking and jesting and all that good stuff. I'm having a ball myself, but it's on the other side of a desk hutch. While I can hear all their fun in there, their senses of humour are not exactly my own. I read aloud a little piece of an article and it was met with snickers and "Yeahhh... okayyyy." Me, on the other hand... well, I had just laughed out loud over the fact that Romanians were selling their sperm to save their car company. Hello? It IS funny... really it is... maybe you have to read it yourself to truly appreciate it...?

So, I sit back here on the computer enjoying myself... alone even as there are other people just over the edge of that desk... as was always the case until I found out about a whole bunch of people who were actually FUN... to /me/. The kind that sit around talking shop, making stupid jokes about not being as bright as the dimmest motherboard LED, shouting obscenities about their "stupid computer" just before praising it and kissing and hugging it as being the bestest computer that ever ran, and other such silliness. Nope. I'm not into the whole physical tickly-tickly or the screams or any other such insanity. I'm into the mundane, the strange, the unusual, the eccentric and the smart wit of quick minds that don't mind a lot of friendly banter accompanied by snorting, belching, and programming wars. And, half of them can actually type.

The worst part is, I'm considered anti-social, when in all truth it's merely that I belong to a group of people known as geeks. I never knew this until a few years ago when I began working in the computer department of my current workplace. There, lo and behold, was the nicest group of people I have ever met. Not just nice, but smart, and oh-so-geeky, even if perfectly capable of being somewhat social in "real" life - you know, the life OUTside of the box. This place of employment allowed me to go to school, where I've met two of the bestest friends of my entire life. In that networking class I met the zaniest creature I've ever known, whose name I refrain from mentioning since this IS the net. The following year I met yet another strange creature and found the most comfortable, closest friendship I've ever had.

Well, all good things must come to an end, and as it turns out he ended up going out with this really nice girl and now I barely see him anymore. My lonliness has multiplied exponentially even though I've been making new friends through a semi-geek I've been dating, mainly because now I know what I've been missing and the people I've lately been hanging out with are soooooooooo far from being geeks that I feel quite out of place even as I have some essence of fun and new experience - finally part of a social life, even if not one of my own choosing. But I know people like my former best friend exist, and I have the inkling that somewhere, someday, I will run across more people like him again, and they will not disappear from my life so dramatically.

Such is life! My optimism prevails. I am now going to attempt to be somewhat social, even if I'm not exactly happy about it.

~nvnohi

voracious lizard! et al [trip]

Okay, Lancelot got hungry while I was away from home for a week... he ate four crix between Monday and Tuesday, two of which were freakin' huge.

Saw friend and mom over last week, was excellent trip. Started out seeing friend, next morning left to see Mom for a few days, we did LOTS of travelling around town. Then I went back to see friend who met up with me and we went to see a concert. EXCELLENT concert, although half way through I ended up nearly falling asleep [whups] and kept waking to the sound of clapping...

After the concert, we went back to his place and stayed up way too late playing Soul Calibur and SSX Tricky. Next morning, we headed up to one of his Events, where we stayed overnight. First day I pretty much hid in the trees, calling people and IMing people on my cell phone (excellent reception for such a secluded campground, must have had a tower nearby). Then I spent the next day talking to this dude about video games, languages, computers, and who knows what else. After about twelve hours of that it was time for my friend and I to go, so we left to play yet MORE Soul Calibur. LOL. The next morning I came back home. At the transit center awaited a familiar vehicle, which carried a familiar person... ::happy sigh::

Anyway it was an awesome trip. Believe it or not, I'm just barely tired tonight!! LOL. Back to work today and the rest of the week... gonna give up on this blog tonight now. Hehheh.

~nvnohi