No, I don’t mean some melodramatic statement about our nation’s course, I mean that one of my machines, named liberty, has failed. It began amidst a sea of brutality, did the grunt-work for Ron Paul Radio, and helped start The Autonomous Broadcasting Company. Now, it has begun sporadically locking up at least once per day, obviously unsuitable for running a streaming server. I still await my Windows machine, and plan to get it back tomorrow or the day after. I now have one machine doing everything. It started life as a test machine, and has become one of my main ones.
Machines have karma, or a vibe. At first, this may sound metaphysical and abstract, and it does have that feel, but it also has a very real physical element. If a moron builds your machine, of course it will have a short life. It gets more complicated of course, as all things in life do. Some machines have a solid feel, and you can tell someone put their heart and skill into it. Other machines have an average feel – nothing special, but it works fine. Name-brand machines have a name-brand feel – mass-produced and not built to last, but they work for a time, as long as you don’t mind disposing of them and their data. Some machines, however, have a shoddy feel that makes you nervous. Liberty has this feel.
It started two and a half years or so ago. My Dad, who I usually avoid dealing with, met “this guy” as he often tends to do, probably in a bar somewhere. He said that the guy would build us all computers. “You’re getting a computer, whether you want one or not.” he said. With that attitude, I figured I may as well just accept the machine.
I made my situation clear to the guy, that I use a speech synthesizer, and need an RS232 serial port. “It is like your monitor. I cannot use the machine with out it.” I patiently explained. He said he understood. I received it in the mail, an amd64 with two SCSI drives, but… no RS232 port. Infuriated, I called back. “Oh sorry man, I didn’t realize that motherboard didn’t have an RS232 port… Boy, hard to find one these days.” No shit, SHerlock! I hung up, and decided to try installing a PCI port. That sort of didn’t work, and I took it to the local computer shop. They said “Well I don’t know anything about Linux, but this is definitely a Linux problem.” I decided not to point out their logical fallacy and left. I finally mailed the thing back to the guy, no doubt stressing the machine.
He got the machine, and we installed Slackware twice, over the phone, to try to make sure that this time it would work. When it didn’t, and I noticed that it didn’t even seem to probe the serial port, I got a bad feeling in my gut. “You did install that port, right?” “uhh…what? no?” I had to excuse myself and eat breakfast before I reached through the phone and strangled him with an RS232 cable! I finally got the machine back with the port, but three mailings took their toll. It has always produced a weird whirring noise, not good. Now, the time has come for it to undergo some maintenance. Goddess only knows what we will find! It will have to wait a little though, since I have this other machine to deal with. It doesn’t rain but it pours, as the saying goes.
