Shiny Thing

Might still need some work, this was assembled without any tools. I think a Dremel is on the top of my list now... I can make my own holes, at least the small ones. ;-)

Reborn

When I first went to the University I bought myself a laptop. Put a little extra money into it and got a (at the time) powerful machine, capable of handling PhotoShop CS2, which was crucial to me. It was my trusty companion for over 4 years when it one day just died on me, leaving with the dreaded blue screen. I took it the doctor, but the prognosis was bad. No chance of revival; its heart, the hard disk, was beyond help. Nothing could be done, but for some reason I couldn't bring myself to throw it on the dump. I kept it in the cellar.

Then there was my daughter's laptop, who also said goodbye to us, but in a more physical, obvious manner. I have absolutely no idea what she did with that computer but it was sort of dismembered. That one too I kept in the house, but for no particular reason at all.

By now you'll probably see where I'm going with this. I decided to play surgeon, and perform a transplant. With no respect what so ever I went to work with the tools I had, spirited by the idea that I would run this hybrid on Linux if I succeeded to breathe life into it.

I did. But it wasn't a straight forward operation, I'll tell you that. I soon found out that the latest edition of Linux - Linux Mint 9 "Isadora" - wouldn't work, as the first try at booting resulted in an error message telling me I needed another CPU. As I wasn't planning on equipping this little baby with any purchased parts, I realized I'd rather had to find an edition that would work with the old processor. So I browsed through the options and settled for the previous Long term support release, which meant Linux Mint 5 "Elyssa". I must stress that I actually don't know what I'm doing, but with a lucky combination of educated guesses and inspired intuition I've now got a functioning laptop. Still have a lot to do though. Like learn not to think Windows. I'm a Linux-newbie, and I owe this to all the dedicated people who are making this possible. I've written about them before, in essays at the Uni, and I have the greatest respect for all of them. And when I get my first pay-check I'll even make a donation.

Have a feeling I'm always semi, bordering on something complete. I'm almost grown up now, but still childish. I have a degree, but could have gone further. I play with technology and feel at home with geeky slang and humor, but wouldn't stand a chance at MIT. I write a lot, but I'm not a writer. I could go on here, but I won't.

But maybe a whole lot of semis make a whole world in the end, and maybe complete is the total of everything, not the completion of a single thing. In that case, maybe I'm ultra complete... My next plan is to harvest the computer's intestines and make jewelery out of it. Have you ever seen a shinier thing than the actual disk in a hard drive? I'll show you next week.

You can't tell, but this post is written on my Reborn, the Resurrected one.

Temporary Appearance

Didn't think I'd ever be interested in houses and interior decoration again, but out of the blue the urge sort of came back. Not that building a house is a current undertaking, but if/when, this might be just the one I'd like to move in to - a stylish barnhouse from Northern Sweden.