Current Ramblings
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
Let me tell you a story. A story about pain.
I got permission a few days ago to reformat and install Linux on this ancient desktop Graham has had lying around. It's a 7-year-old Dell, nothing you would want to use all the time but certainly something you wouldn't mind completely fucking up if you screwed up a new OS installation. Our apartment isn't that big, and he got rid of the monitor for it long ago, so on Saturday I went to a used computer shop and picked up a KVM switch so I could just use my normal monitor, mouse, and keyboard and switch between the two PCs. Except it didn't come with any cables, and they didn't have any of the kind I needed. So I went to the Micro Center in the same shopping center and bought four cables, two video cables and two PS/2 cables. I got home and realized that not only did I misremember which monitor hook-ups were on the back of the box, I had snagged a wrong PS/2 cable, too. So I was thwarted until today. I went back, exchanged three of the four cables, and came home to realize that I had totally forgotten about the PS/2 cables for the keyboard. So I went back to Micro Center again just before they closed and got another pair of PS/2 cables, and a power cord because it turned out he had thrown that away with the monitor. We're talking well over $40 worth of just cables at this point. So I've been looking forward to getting this done for days, I've spent a little more than I had really wanted to, I finally get all the cables hooked up under my desk, and...the KVM switch doesn't work right. The main computer displays right but it won't recognize either the keyboard or the mouse, and the second computer recognizes the keyboard okay but the screen is unbearably fuzzy and it won't recognize the mouse either. The switch itself was only $5, so that's not that big a deal, but all those cables were expensive, and from what I've seen online not only do most new ones come with built-in cables, but that kind of switch can kind of suck and freak out if you type too fast (and I type quite fast) and not recognize the scroll wheel on your mouse, so I don't know if I even want to bother with any of that.
So I'm thinking tomorrow I'm going to return all those cables (they come in Japanese-toy-style bubbles that slide off the cards, good as new) and see if they have any cheap switches for just the monitor, and I'm also considering just getting a well-established commercial distribution of Linux that I'll feel safe installing as a dual-boot on my main computer. (I'm specifically thinking Mandrakelinux Discovery here.) It's just frustrating and stupid.
posted@12:26 AM by:Trixter: 0 comments