But truth, cher ami, is a colossal bore.
- narrator, Camus' The Fall
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LEST I AM JUDGED FOR THIS
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    dear reader/listener/viewer/enjoyer/co-conspirator:
    lest i be judged for it, i inform you now that this project continues to be a scratch pad, a space for experimentation

    in other words, enjoy what you find here, and feel free to participate, but try not to take anything personal, and don't believe that this project presents an accurate view of me or my life

    this is a window, certainly, but one that hasn't been cleaned in quite some time

    your view may be foggy, obscure...you may see things that aren't really there...

    --harold

    want some background music?
    please consider downloading my most recent music podcast.

    and yes, i love my mom and my dad;
    they've always been good to me, no matter what impression you may have received here

    they never locked me in a cellar or anything
     
    highlighted post from the archives: me rambling about a new job (from two years ago)
    i recently messed with the archives, so they may not work correctly, but you may take your chances:
    December 2002 January 2003 February 2003 April 2003 May 2003 June 2003 July 2003 August 2003 September 2003 October 2003 November 2003 December 2003 January 2004 February 2004 March 2004 April 2004 May 2004 June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 October 2004 November 2004 December 2004 January 2005 February 2005 March 2005 April 2005 May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 November 2007 February 2008 March 2008 May 2008

    i once was an active member of the

    association of music podcasting

    musicpodcasting.org

    along with these fine music podcasters:

    all florida indies - bing futch
    audio gumshoe - rich palmer
    audio popcorn - krash coarse
    aural icebergs music cast - tiffany rapplean
    capital rock show - bucket aka jason
    darkhorse radio - alan carr
    ears to hear - jill lawton
    eclectic mix - george l smyth
    homegrown podcast - nic treadwell
    indiefeed - chris macdonald
    le jazz affair - sal calfa
    rubyfruit radio - heather smith
    sober cafe podcast - gracie hollombe
    sundown lounge - larry winfield
    tempo of the down - harold (that's me!)
    the darkcompass podcast - rowland cutler
    the fabrications podcast - matt macfarlane
    the phill(er) - phill ramey
    the radiozoom podcast - john bollwitt
    thepillarcast.com - jon tucker
    uc radio podshow - michael yusi
    zaldor's world - les zaldor

    ¡the text on this blog wants to leap out of its borders!

    this is...

    something that happened

    somethingthathappened.com
    		stories by harold j. johnson, in various formats - including text, audio, video, and podcasts
     
     
    Sunday, June 26, 2005  

    The following story should have no appeal to normal people; it is for people like me, geeky and entertained by technical accounts of installation and troubleshooting headaches. Unless you're easily entertained, I encourage you to read or listen to one of my prior stories instead.

    I have a PowerBook G3 I took a chance on at Goodwill, purchasing for $60 knowing that it was having some issues. It appears I've resolved those issues by reformatting the hard drive and temporarily installing a new operating system. This is what I was hoping for, and so far so good. So now the plan is to install the operating system I will be using going forward; the question is, which one do I choose to use?

    Since this is an Apple computer, and an old one at that - a PowerBook G3 "Wallstreet" running at 233MHz - I have the following choices: 1) any flavor of Mac OS from 8 through X, or 2) Linux. Currently I have OS 9.2.2 installed, the highest of Apple's "Classic" operating systems prior to their switch to OS X. If I stick with Apple, I'd prefer to run the fastest flavor of OS X, which is (thankfully) their latest release, Tiger. Yet I've just found out that Tiger introduces an issue of concern to PowerBook owners: it stresses the CPU more than prior releases. This causes the CPU to get hot and the fan to spin up frequently, something Panther and other releases of OS X rarely did. This makes for a noisy PowerBook, and I'd guess it doesn't help preserve battery life much, either.

    I also have the option of installing Linux. Ubuntu is the current Linux distribution I'm considering; it installs on old PowerBooks and provides access to the ever-increasing variety of applications (most of them free) available to Linux users. Yet I'm uncertain as to whether my new wireless PC card will be compatible with Ubuntu; I have some evidence it will but it seems that Mac OS X is more certain to perform in that area. Having a reliable wireless setup is very important to me - in fact, it's the main reason I purchased the PowerBook.

    Installation itself may also be an issue, since I don't currently have a CD/DVD-ROM drive, a floppy drive, or a reliable network connection to install from. I was able to install OS 9 only after purchasing some cables on eBay, networking the PowerBook to an old Umax (Macintosh clone), and using its CD-ROM drive to install from. The problem is, the Umax doesn't always want to recognize it's own CD-ROM drive, so I often have to reboot several times before the drive shows up. That's not even the half of it, for even when it does recognize the drive, there's no guarantee it'll show up on my PowerBook, too. I'm not certain why this happens; there's clearly a bit of SCSI Voodoo going on here. I only know that some mystical series of reboots between my PowerBook and the Mac clone sooner or later brings up the OS install disc's icon on my PowerBook, and when it does I jump on the opportunity to run the installer. During this series of exercises I feel like a circus clown performing his juggling routine, flaming scsi-enabled Macs flying through the air. I suppose I should simply be happy the drive shows up at all, but you can understand why I'm not exactly looking forward to my next install, which has the potential to provide even more comedy.

    All this said, I'm willing to go through some trouble in order to get the operating system of my dreams installed on this computer. I don't believe OS 9.2 is it, though it's a fine operating system for those who, well, don't need OS X or Linux. I think I do, however, unless someone know of a way I can get my wireless PC adapter to work under OS 9. (The PC card is a D-Link DWL-G630.) Email your suggestions, if you have any.     6/26/2005 04:33:00 PM
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