Asa Jay's weblog

I’ve needed to post something here for a while now. I guess now is as good a time as any for you see, I have a plethora of other activity going at the moment and I can’t actually interact with -any- of it, so I might as well write.

On my primary Windows machine, running XP SP3, I’m engaged in a huge backup. I’ve not accomplished a full backup for better than a year so I’m due. The size is approximately 50GB and I’m only backing it up to a local external USB drive. It’s now on day three. I calculate is has a few hours left to go. In order to allow that machine to run with as much CPU and RAM available to the backup, I’m avoiding using that machine. Please understand, that machine is nearly 10 years old, running a 1GHz processor and a maximum of 512MB of RAM. Yes, I’ve checked and double checked, that’s the maximum the motherboard will take. Sigh.

My Audio/Video Studio machine is still running a Beta version of Win7. Nope, I’ve not got around to updating it so it constantly gives me warnings about not being a valid or activated version. The hardware is a 1.3GHz processor with 2GB of RAM and works a bit better but still has limitations. I try to only run one program at a time. It’s currently capturing video from my camera through Sony Vegas Movie Studio Platinum 8. I really should upgrade the software as well. But instead, I’m currently downloading the last update to it (version 8.0d) at the same time the same machine is capturing video. So I can’t really do anything else on -that- machine either.

My openSUSE Linux box, which is where I’m at now, is fetching new repository data because I wanted to see if I could install Descent II and play, since my other computers are currently busy, and I’m bored. Not that real kind of adult bored where I have nothing to do… no, it’s that childish kind of bored where there is plenty to do but I don’t want to do it, or perhaps in this case, I -can’t- because the other computers are otherwise engaged. So, -this- computer is busy with trying to figure out if I can install Descent II.

It doesn’t look like I have any kind of DOS emulator currently installed, so that route is out. I’ll have to either find a native Linux install or go through the trouble of installing a DOS emulator. Sigh.

Meanwhile, my wife is playing a game on -her- computer, and my son’s is idling in his bedroom while he sleeps. Doesn’t this all sound just a wee bit on the NUTS side? And that doesn’t count my work notebook computer sitting in my car, my school notebook computer sitting just a few feet away (another SUSE Linux install), and my oldest notebook computer next to that, running Windows Me and Knoppix dual boot. Just not much I can do with them either. I feel like Bugs Bunny after he’s lost his mind.

Argh, just found there are no references for Descent in the SUSE repositories. Darn, now it’s harder… I’ll just do a quick Internet Search. Ooo… ooo…. first hit is Descent III for Linux… aw great…..now I have to -wait- for the page to load.

Did I mention I’m on a 256K DSL line? Yea…. faster than the old dial-up at 56K but not near as fast as my friends with Cable. Sigh. Hmm, other hits on the same page are for Descent I and Descent II, both for Linux.

Hmm, Descent I, RPMs from as recent at 1999. Oh yea.. that’ll work. (NOT!). Let’s see what D2 has… hmm… looks like best shot is to download source and try to compile. Oh yea… by the time I get through -that- it’ll be Christmas. Argh! Meanwhile the page for Descent III for Linux finally finished loading. Hmmm, looks good but it’s starting to look like a file sharing site and they want me to join. Well -that’s- not gonna happen either. I guess it’s back to installing a DOS emulator and trying that out.

A quick check of the backup operation and it’s on the next to the last archive, so less than two hours to go based on average verification times per archive in the log. I should go check on the video transfer and then I’ll be ready for bed. So, mission accomplished, I killed enough time letting my brain ramble through my fingers to the keyboard that I’m about caught up with my “waiting” period. 🙂

I gotta get me some faster computers.

Asa Jay

This entry was posted on Monday, November 29th, 2010 at 21:04 and is filed under Computers, Hardware, Linux, Software, Windows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.