The crazy stuff I do. At least I'll get a backup out of it.

Alright, now comes the point when I'm about to do something that's either an ingenious act of geekery, or complete stupidity, depending on whether or not it works.

Those of you who went through the rigors of 435 with me will remember that I was using two computers, one for windows development, and another for Java/Unix development (including the black magic of compilers). After finishing 435, I installed Gentoo on what was my windows machine. At that point, the CD-ROM drive was not working well enough to even boot from a CD reliably, so I did what any sensible geek with multiple computers and a network would do: I booted it off the network, and ran the full install in that manner.

Now I've come up with an idea for a program that could be pretty awesome, and seems to be best suited to C#. This of course means that I need to re-install VS.net. Lorien, my old windows machine is refusing to cooperate, and even if it were behaving, I'd rather just haul one around. On Caladan, my primary machine, I have a partition that's not currently being used for anything important, and is big enough for Windows and VS.net, but guess what? In all of the years of development between DOS and Windows XP, Microsoft never fucking managed to be able to boot Windows from an extended partition.

Here is where the act of bravery comes into play. In order to put Windows on this machine, I have to re-partition my drive. I don't have broadband, so I can't re-install Gentoo (that is the one downside of using a source-based distro). The solution I've devised is to make a backup of everything, re-partition my drive, and then restore not only my files, but my entire OS.

Sounds like fun, no?

Oh, and Catherine, I don't suppose you can explain how on earth the file titled "Metallica - Turn the Page.mp3" (copied from your collection) does not actually contain the song it claims, but a combination of several songs, including "Turn the Beat Around" and "They're Coming to Take Me Away", could you?

Current Music: Creedence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising