Done yesterday (20100919 Su)

[mdlbear]

0919 Su
  * up 7:45; W=197; drugs, nose, teeth; dishes, coffee
  @ filkertom: Roger Ebert's blog alerts us to YERT: solar roads!
  @ International Talk Like A Pirate Day  Arrrrrrr!
  * backups:  2010-09-19T08:39:38-0700 - 2010-09-19T09:26:16-0700
    /dev/sda5            1349854392 458801796 822483968  36% /media/bak
  * if I'm going to be recording anything but scratch tracks in the office, I
    need a separate preamp for the Rode. -> brought in a Presonus.
  * some dash-compatibility edits in .profile, cleanup in .bashrc
  : big upgrade on dorsai.  Recommended: 
      libglib2.0-data libltdl-dev libpurple-bin openoffice.org-emailmerge \ 
      openoffice.org-filter-binfilter
  : disk errors on dorsai.  :(  Good time to install 64studio, I guess.
  & lots of puttering.  Got rid of most of the incandescent bulbs in the
    lighting box; installed FS bulb in office, new bulb in the garage, ...
  & got a new circline bulb for the LR fan, only to discover that once again
    it's the controller at fault.  GAAH!
  * assembled new nova (nova nova?) in the Venus case; boots fine w/o disk.
  * Need to replace the PS with a Pico -- it's annoying.  Fry's has updated
    PicoPS's, but I don't need one.
  @ Dandelyon's Worlds - On Being (or perhaps Becoming) an Outsider
    Shweta_Narayan - Dissimilation
  * Nova's brain transplant successful.
    there seems to be a problem with the keyboard, which is why the display
    didn't come back after it blanked.  Fortunately, I just let it keep
    going.  Silence.  Sweet, sweet silence.
  * bath; bed ~11:30; snuggle

I discovered, when I went to record a vocal track, that Audacity appeared to be seriously buggy. And that I didn't have a package for Ardour. It's possible, though, that Audacity's hanging was due, not to software problems, but a bad disk. It started getting odd errors in the middle of an upgrade a little later, and the fsck on the later reboot had a bundle of them. It still booted, but things were distinctly weird.

At this point I decided to replace the fileserver, as planned, and use the old box as my new desktop. I went out for a walk and a trip to Fry's (for a missing 20-24-pin power adapter). The upgrade went smoothly except for a bad or flaky KVM switch. :( But the office is a lot quieter now -- the nearest fan is the ceiling fan in the living room. (That'll change once I get the new desktop configured, of course. For now I'm on my netbook in the living room.)

Quite a lot of puttering, too, mostly having to do with lighting. Tossed the last of the incandescents from the lighting box into a bag for recycling, except for two appliance lights and a heat lamp. Somehow I don't think they make compact fluorescent heat lamps.

Some links, as usual.

ETA: I should add that no data were lost in the the wreckage of Dorsai's disk -- all of it lives on the fileserver, and a desktop machine has nothing but its installed OS, applications, and config files. The config files had been backed up Friday evening.