Boardectomies are either like Legos or brain surgery - either everything snaps together simply and easily or you end up elbow-deep in the patient's cranium for a few hours and it's a crapshoot whether they survive. I'm still not sure of the outcome; all the memory seems to be there, but whether it has enough motor control to avoid drooling on itself or crapping uncontrollably remains to be seen.
In geek terms, I've given up on diagnosing the problems with eeviac.cynistar.net, the machine that did DNS, jabber (IM), mail, web, and a few other things and upgraded it from an Athlon 2200 to an Athlon64 3500 with new motherboard, video, and firewire. BFD. The original disk from eeviac went into a machine called lina (an Athlon 2100; coincidentally my desktop machine) which I've been meaning to upgrade 'for a while.' lina's disk is sitting detached and idle until I get enough motivation to archive all the important stuff from it. The new machine with the swanky disks is set up as my current desktop box; it's named soyokaze, which was the name of the original cynistar.net/austinimprov.com machine. The original soyokaze is sitting idle until I can sort out how to make it boot again, or move my ripped CDs from it. It's just as well; that machine is a 2U half-depth rackmount that sounds like a vacuum cleaner when it's turned on.
So for those of you keeping score at home: eeviac's brain is now in lina's body. soyokaze is new and has no relation to the old soyokaze which lives in its shadow under a new name (sort of a Prince and the Pauper scenario) and the old eeviac has had its guts replaced and will become the new lina (like when Rod Stewart changed his hairstyle and renewed his career, or the point at which the Scientologists got their hooks into Travolta or Cruise. Or when Steve Martin's movies stopped being funny.)
This doesn't have much to do with improv. It just explains why I'm up so damn late and why I'm killing time posting. Reboot, tweak, reboot again...
Anyway, this reminds me of a few internet truisms:
- People will say things online that they'd never say to someone's face for fear of having the holy living shit kicked out of them,
- Despite signals being chopped up, sent across a million miles of copper and fiber, and miraculously reassembled intact on the other end, people still have feelings that can be hurt no matter the distance between sender and recipient, and
- Nothing written on the internet matters one damn bit - deal with it and get on with your (real) lives.
I think there's a problem when people take what's said on the forums too seriously or miss the subtlety of normal human conversation, both in the reading and the writing. People love/hate thematic/narrative/short-form improv for whatever reason, and while talking through the love & hate may help give others a new perspective on things, I think it's important to be extra-tolerant of other people's (wrong and stupid) opinions and to not be a big asshole to others unless there's no other option (which IMHO there always is; it's called a power button...)
Having said that, there's a difference between being tactful and tolerant and self-censorship, where you shy away from controversy for fear of retribution (NB: some people manipulate others by feigning offense so as to get others to tiptoe around them. I don't see it here so much, but it's bad juju just the same.) The whole point of running these forums is to bring people together and foster understanding and community and the occasional smack-talking. For the most part, people seem to treat each other with respect so I'm a bit worried about why people feel they need to retract their posts (hell, I'm violating two of the four cardinal rules of posting right now: don't post when angry, drunk, hungry, or tired.)
Whatever; the installation on the new machine seems to have taken and I may get the new Frankenputers sorted out by the weekend. Time to wrap this up.
Get on with your bad selves in this life out of balance.
