Busy Week

I was going to write this as a comment, but I figure it meritted a full post. I put the computer related stuff at the end so those not technically inclined can just skip it:

Now that I have a "cool" XBox which I can do stuff with, I was taking a look at my game collection and decided to trade in the not so good titles I purchased and have been sitting on the shelf. Took the 6 games into EB yesterday and the clerk rang them in for a credit of $54. They has this thing where you can trade in 3 games and get Metroid Prime 2 for free. . . so I did that instead. Traded in the other 3 for a used copy of Tales of Symphonia, plus used my EB card for an additional 10% off. . . cost me less than $20 plus 6 old games to get Metroid Prime 2 ($59.99 MSRP) and Tales of Symphonia ($49.99 used). Now that's a deal! BTW, did I mention I backed up the games before I sold them?

I gotta checkout those audio books on suprnova! I'm a notoriously slow reader and for some reason reading puts me to sleep. I guess it doesn't help that I prefer reading while lying down on a bed, I've been doing it for years, and probably inadvertantly trained my body to react that way. The same goes with cola, I usually get really sleepy after I have one. Probably wasn't that good to be drinking 2L bottles while playing D&D into the wee hours of the morning.

On the subject of RAID, I'm planning on setting up a RAID-1 array in my file server sometime soon. I've been sorta looking at this project with a mixed feeling of anticipation and dread. . . i.e. it'll be really cool once I get it up and running (I don't have to worry about backups anymore), but getting it setup is going to be a nightmare (dual-boot system with a mix of FAT32 and ReiserFS partitions scattered over two smaller drives).

Finally got my winbox fixed (and before Christmas too). Rebuilding a windows machine is a serious pain in the ass. Install, reboot, install, reboot, patch, reboot. . . over and over again. Slows things down like crazy. In total, it took me about 2 full days to backup and restore the machine. Any added value aside from getting it back into a stable state and cleaning some crap off the drive? No. That's 2 wasted days.

Fixing the winbox however got me into update mode. Been thinking of things I've been putting off on the other computers. Not that my Linux boxes have problems, just been wanting to extend their capabilities, i.e. finally cleanning off Win95 from my web server which is taking slightly more than half the harddrive so I have decent web/ftp space. I got a pretty lengthy list, I'm guessing it'll keep me busy well into the new year. . . .