Reintroducing... my new PC!

Heh. Well, sort of. See my previous introduction if you want to hear
me brag about the hardware.


But hardware is only half the computer; software makes up the other
half. And after a week of tinkering, I got my new beast configured
just the way I like it. I installed all the applications I like, got
it tweaked and tuned, arranged my icons Just So. Now my new computer
is *really* here; now I can start USING it.


Actually, it wasn't the installation of the computer that took me such
a long time; that's a day or two's job at most (what can I say, I have
a lot of applications and I'm *really* persnickity about how I arrange
the start menu ;-). No, the time consuming thing was the network,
which I decided to rewire and reconfigure while I was at it. Between a
dead switch, obstinate firewalls, obtuse router configurations and
uppity "browse master" software, I was banging my head for three or
four days before I got the network straightened out. *


Then I did something I had wanted to do for years but never got around
to: as soon as I had everything on the new computer Just Perfect (tm),
I made a back-up / restore DVD. Next time the computer starts getting
cranky and bloated from too much drive-by software, I'll just drop a
clean system and apps partition onto the hard-drive and start from
fresh - without the requisite two days of tweaking and reinstalling it
usually takes.


So, now I have my new machine; it's all ready for me to play with
it... and I'm almost afraid to mar its pristine flawlessness.


You know, maybe I won't, just yet. I have four older computers that
might benefit from a reinstall themselves. Maybe for the time being
I'll just let the new machine sit in the corner so I can bask in its
awesomeness. By next week it'll be obsolete anyway. ;-)







* my old network was a real mess; due to legacy software,
malfunctioning hardware, and a lack of inclination to work out the
problems, my network was accessing the internet through a cranky
software proxy running on a computer that had two network cards (one
cable to the broadband modem, the other connecting to the LAN). If the
switch futzed out, the internet went down. If the proxy computer was
off, the internet went down. If the proxy software crashed, the
internet went down. And of course, sometimes the internet went down
all on its own.

It was a real pain, but I held onto it for two reasons: 1) pure
laziness, and 2) that configuration let me hang onto the 10.0.0.x
subnet for my LAN. The latter was important to me as -unlike the
stupidest of apes who can remember up to five numbers at a time,
remembering a complex number like 192.168.1.x (as opposed to the
simpler 10.0.0.x) was virtually impossible to me. Fortunately, this
was another area straightned out (being able to use the 10.0.0.x
subnet, not being stupider than an ape) with my network
re-configuration. It took a lot of fighting with my router, but now it
lets me use 10.0.0.x ;-). AND I can access the Internet too.


.

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