Hmmm, well….
First I’ll write about why I’m currently feeling a little down…, then I’ll say the amusing thing that was driving me nuts earlier (hopefully, that’ll cheer me back up….
Why’m I down…well, I finally put my CD-RW in my computer, and I thought, ah, for the sake of tidyness I’ll go put these boxes (my modem one and the CD-RW one) with the rest of the hardware boxes, out in the garage – and I’ll fetch in my ISA network one….
But, on wandering out of my room I found my dad had the attic open – and I realised that this was a convenient moment to go and find the pictures I used to have on my wall….
But there’s something special about one of these pictures which makes it important to me, it’s the first, surviving photo of me as myself. There were two photos taken of me – by other people, with me being myself – due to a situation I didn’t actually engineer (since I was waaaay to scared to engineer situations back then). One was a school trip – where we were put into teams – and one of the final competitions, worth some ridculous amount was to get one of your “male” team members to dress as a girl – and whoever looked the best would get these points.
My team chose me – with my (at the time) dead long brown hair and whatever as being the best choice – and I (complaining bitterly (but not quite enough to persuade them not to do it… <g>)) ended up being dressed by two of the girls as a girl :-)
Anyway, we went outside – and one of my other “team mates” took a photo….that was the first….(By the way we won – the bloke judging said if I’d shaved my legs then he’d have dated me!)….
Unfortunately, Ben – the person with the camera was as hated by the school populous as myself (how did we end up in a team together…?)….and his camera was smashed – destroying the film :-(((
The photo I’m after dates from a few years later – when I was a member of (don’t laugh) the “Woodcraft Folk” – this very 60’s style movement was founded by someone who didn’t believe in separating boys and girls a’la Scouts/Guides. So – it was essentially the same – but was also a non-religous non-state group (so we didn’t pledge aligence to god and the Queen)….
Anyway, at one camp I was in a group – doing a “performance” of Stan Freeburg’s version of “Day-oh”. This we mimed to with a variety of instruments (okay, I was so nervous I barely mimed – more opened and close my mouth fish-wise). One of the girls (Claire I think) – suggested that some of us lads should wear skirts.
Unfortunately she approached each of us separately to say this and my first reaction was “NO WAY!” – I was terrified that she had sussed me….Anyway – she sort of said…”But x is doing it”. And in what must be the fastest turn around ever I changed my mind and agreed. And the photo I want to find – which used to hang on my wall is a group of people, standing by a (unlit) fire – with me as one of them.
And it’s dissapeared. Infact they’ve all dissapeared. And it makes me feel dreadfully sad – becuase I know the things I did in my youth as myself – shopping and whatever – and none of them are documented. There’s no photos of how I used to look when I was being myself – except this one. And no-one in my family knows where it is…. :-(
Anyway, to cheer myself up I’ll tell you about the “amusing” situation I managed to get myself into.
I decided that I’d clear up a bit – and I also decided that having 100 UKP of equipment sat on my floor, waiting for me to drop things on it – or kick it – wasn’t the best plan in the world – so I thought, “Hell, I’ll put it in, configure the SCSI card, and also swap the IDE cable for a UDMA66 capable cable” (although having done it I’m not sure that my motherboard does UDMA 66!).
Anyway, so I shut down, whipped the case off (again), stuck the drive in, swapped the cables (got the PC speaker working) re-routed the audio cables – with less than mm to spare)…and fired up…and went into windows – hoping it would do autodetect and thus tell me what my SCSI card was set to….
See, the card is jumpered (good, I can tell it exactly what to do), but I had only printed out a smallish chunk of the documentation at work (bad, it was on a CD-RW which I couldn’t read on the DVD drive in the PC). Howver, some of you may see where this is going….I couldn’t autodetect the card – and I couldn’t read the manual on how to configure it – because the only drive in the machine which can read the CD was the SCSI cd-writer. See where I’m going?
After a bit I thought “Ha ha! I can stick the old CD-Rom in and read it with that” however connecting it as a slave on the harddisk channel (the only bit of cable that would reach the drive) brought up a display from the BIOS somewhat like this:
ATAPI DEVICE: LKJHASD(*Y RBD &*W JKHCB UASGD*&AWYJBCZSkjb;
Which I felt was a “bad sign”. Eventually I removed the DVD and put the drive in as master – which seemed to work…
I have no idea why it wouldn’t work as slave on the primary IDE channel….but never mind.
The only odd thing is that my SCSI card used to display all the settings and exactly what it was doing when it was initalised. Now it doesn’t – and I can’t see how to configure this in the manual. Which is odd…..’cos I know what I changed and none of it was “Display useful info instead of a blank screen”….
Anyway it seems to work now – although I’m yet to set it up under linux…..which will actually be the first device I’ve added to Linux since setting it up…apart from my printer, which has moved (again) to this machine….
Leaving the music machine to just play music atm….
Right, I think it’s time for a cup of tea :)
And I am feeling a bit happier for that…..
—
Kate
