2015 — 11 March: Wednesday
From power on, to having four desktop apps loaded and ready for use, takes my new PC less than 10 seconds. The "fast" OS/2 PS/2 I used in the IBM Hursley Lab 20 years ago took seven minutes to wake up, sniff around, find the network, and load a 3270 terminal emulator... Ever onward. No plan of battle survives the first 5 minutes of contact with the enemy. My chat after lunch with Len — not the enemy — yesterday gave me a new data security wrinkle to think about. Well you know what they say about the (de)merit of a life unexamined.
My digital life...
... in 'data volume' terms consists of:
- a trivial1 set of text and data files, web files, and image files that I bash around and play with day-to-day on my PC, and
- a large set of audio and video files that merely pass through the PC on their way to my 7 TB of NAS storage, from which they are regularly squirted to the A/V system for my listening and viewing pleasure.2
In light of my "paranoia"...
... Len suggests I have two of my 480 GB SSDs in a RAID1 pair to hold both the Linux system and the "trivial" category data above, leaving the third 480 GB SSD as a primary backup volume for said "trivial" data, and the 240 GB SSD as a "scratch" volume for transient data on its way to a longer-term residency on the NAS storage. When my latching SATA cables turn up, they will be labelled accordingly, and the Games can begin.
Clearing the rubble of my recent PC barebones assembly and cannibalising3 what I can from BlackBeast Mark II (before relegating the empty husk to Peter's room) has worked up an appetite for some breakfast.
I regard myself...
... as reasonably tolerant, but among my "five a day" I draw the line at swallowing the large insect that had clearly drowned in my just-opened carton of orange juice some months ago. Round the U-bend it went, along with the untasted but rather cloudy contents of the carton. I realise that bacteria and viruses are the true overlords of the planet, but insects aren't too far behind.
Had to smile at the bullets I dodged on Microsoft's latest round of mega-patching yesterday, and at this, too:
A funny thing about publishing is that it's populated almost exclusively by frustrated writers. It's a kind of slow-burn Stanford Prison Experiment, in which former English majors are randomly assigned the roles of language guard and word prisoner, affirming once more how quickly and insanely people will adapt to new, relative states of power and powerlessness.
Editors tend to give up on me after the first few bruises :-)
Having encountered...
... a previously unseen — but, given the mischief I'm currently "up to", an entirely foreseeable — boot-time message about one second after pressing the power button...
Continue waiting, S to skip mount, E to enter recovery
... I pressed "S" because, unlike my PC, I already knew full well that the only SSD currently in BlackBeast to be found (and thus mounted) is the one with Linux on. Fingers crossed, and here's my desktop. Showing broken links to directories on the temporarily absent SSDs. Where's the improvement in that, I hear you ask?
I've been cleaning out surplus power leads before they tangle, fitting a DVD-ROM, moving the front panel memory card reader, removing the BD-ROM (possibly permanently), and getting ready to re-seat all four SSDs "the other way round" in their trays. This keeps power and SATA cables well clear of the yet-to-return graphics card. I now know why two of the SSDs were beyond BlackBeast's ken: their power connections had both ganged aft a'gley. Round #1 complete.
Time for lunch, while I herd my lions gird my loins for Round #2 :-)
Speaking of loins...
... (as in "fruit of") Junior's just called. He'll be here on Friday evening with ladyfriend, van, and a new bed to build and swap into the place where the present one is. I rather hope they will remove the present one when they depart, rather than leaving that joyless task to me. Technology Towers isn't exactly overflowing with spare, unused space at the best of times. Currently, things are a bit high-entropy even by my standards. And BP has invited dear Mama to their AGM. (Don't think I'll trouble her with that.)
Round #2
And here's all my missing 'molehole' data back courtesy of the next SSD I've replaced. And the lighttpd server running as a service can now, once again, find its 'localhost' web files, too. Ever onward...
Round #3
If, as they say, you can read this... it's being edited on a brand-new installation of Linux Mint 17.1 on BlackBeast Mark III that took less than five minutes to imbue with Linux goodness from a USB ISO image, and then about 15 minutes further while it updated itself with 460 MB of recent updates. I shall now pop it on my local Raspberry Pi2 webserver for a sanity check, and then whizz it over to Texas where the external subset of 'molehole' is (I hope) up and running and ready to receive it.
Music via the excellent little "decibel" MP3 player is restored from a randomly-chosen folder on one of the NAS boxes, and I'm listening to a not-so-recent (but soothing) BBC Radio 3 "Late Junction" selection as I type. Thunderbird email (24,936 and counting!) and Firefox web browsing work fine. That, and web file access, should keep me out of trouble for a while. Tomorrow, I hope to get Len's paintjob to restore some sanity (not to mention some symbolic links) to my currently suboptimal default File System arrangement (derangement, more like). He's sent over his "thoughts" for me to give it a whirl...
Well, the main point of today's exercise, after all, was firstly to retrieve access to the wandering SSDs, and then (having identified the one that was currently a viable tabula rasa) simply to put Mint 17.1 on it ab initio as a Proof of Concept.
I have to say...
... an OS that takes less than 5 minutes to install again from scratch is — frankly — an OS that I shall finally enjoy playing with, and getting to know a lot better. A fast CPU, lots of RAM, and rapid SSD disk drives all help, of course. As do people who know what they're doing! (I am not yet in that set.) By the way, even with BlackBeast Mark III sitting less than two feet away on my desk, with both side panels and two front panels removed, I'm still hearing the music way above the low-level fan noise from the 750 watt power supply. The heatsink atop the CPU is barely warm to the touch.
What does irritate me a little is I've been stuck here all day waiting for Mr Yodel to drop off those four latching SATA cables and he still has yet to show up. [Pause] Well, it's 20:07 and he's just delivered the things. Good. In other news, I was hooting with laughter at a 1960 episode of "The Navy Lark" on gossip and secrets, yet found the episode of "I'm sorry I'll read that again" that followed completely fatuous. Odd; I remember thinking it was hilarious when I first heard it!