brett's logjam

I’m currently helping Merrystar move from her apartment in Alexandria to our townhouse in Springfield. Her parents are coming up this weekend with a pickup to help us with the big things, and I was in there early today to let all the utilities guys in to turn things on.

The last time I moved it took a month to get the gas turned on, and two months for the phones to be straightened out. It’s strange to have everything taken care of before moving. It makes the lifting heavy boxes of books up and down stairs not too bad.

So.

After about three weeks, my computer at home is finally rebuilt. I learned a few things:

• Upgrading Win98 to Win2000 will solve some of your problems. Because it feels guilty for having done so, it will introduce a host of additional problems to make up for it.
• Triple-boot systems, no matter how cool they are in concept, can be rather tricky to set up. This is especially true if 2/3rds of your system is written by Microsoft. Your hard drive may collapse under the boot weight.
• When your hard drive crashes, the period of panic is much shorter when all your data is on CDs you burned the week before.
• Lotus Notes is wonky no matter what OS you run. It is a fundamental axiom of this world.

So my apologies to all those to whom I owe email responses; they’re coming, honest. I’ve been restoring files from CD and should have my inbox back in the next day or two or three.