This week’s musings are pretty nerdy because I had some seriously nerdy accomplishments. They mostly have to do with computer set up projects that I’ve been putting off in a really large way.
To me, setting up computers and playing with network configuration are some of life’s most tedious tasks. Installing software is boring and there’s always that hideous risk that you’ll end up making a huge mess of everything and be "dead in the water." So it’s good to do these things when you are NOT under a deadline. That luxury hasn’t happened until this week when I finally got everything else handled.
My first task was getting the Macintosh to talk to the network. (And the network to talk to it.) As it turns out, there’s a nifty software product called DAVE that lets Macs play easily on Windows TCP/IP networks like ours. (Go to http://www.thursby.com if you’re interested.) With great trepidation I downloaded the 4MB "evaluation" copy. I burned it to CD and stuffed it into the Mac and installed it. Lo and behold, DAVE really works as advertised. Egad.
Yesterday in a fit of activity, I finally moved myself over to the XP machine. That 512MB of RAM was calling out to me and my old Win98 machine has really been showing its age (and resulting instability). I installed my gobs and gobs of graphic software and moved all the data over.
Physically moving the computers around was a really dusty and foul experience, but happily, as far as I can tell, everything works on my new set up. I even got the very ancient scanner to play with XP, which is no small feat, since HP has dropped support for it. The old card that came with it wouldn’t even FIT in a slot.
I had a SCSI card set up in the Win98 computer because I had daisy-chained the CD burner and the scanner. This computer has a burner already, so I don’t need the old one. Now I have still more extra hardware sitting around. If one of the other computers has a SCSI card, maybe we can hook it back up. (That is SO not today’s problem.)
My week wasn’t completely nerdy however. This week was also tomato crisis week. The ever-ripening garden tomatoes *needed* to be used, so on Monday I made and froze 32 cups of tomato sauce. (Yes, that’s eight 4-cup tupperwares!) There will be many pasta dinners this winter 🙂