h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Mother arrived. I met her at the bus station, spent three-and-a-quarter hours with her, and only told her to "SHUT UP!!!" three times. We did $tarbuck$, Quid's In, the Oxfam book shop, O'Neill's and Aberdeen Market.

Once I'd got her safely on the bus home, I headed round to Grambo's to figure out what was causing random dialler popups on his PC. A mug of strong with a large Whisky in it later, I came to the conclusion his virus scanner was three years old and had never been updated because he was too mean to pay for it. I set it up downloading AVG and headed home for a plate of stovies and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on Radio 4.

Then, while listening to The Archers, I replaced the floppy drive in the COGS machine and updated the BIOS. Next, I installed SuSE 8.1 Linux.

It worked, for ten or fifteen minutes, then it locked up. I rebooted and set all the motherboard options to their most conservative, then started Linux again. It ran for ten minutes, then locked up. I decided to leave it till tomorrow.

Poor Mum! Does she listen to The ARchers too?
I note that you are able to listen to TA while doing complicated things to software and hardware perhaps too. Impressive.

A question that we would call "indiscrète": Have you ever thought of switching to Mac?

Martine, I own several Macs, and I run the Mac User Group on here. ("The Orchard", A690653)

Next question...

Do you have to tinker with the MAcs quite somuch?

And

How many computers have you got????

I rarely tinker with the Macs because I rarely use them... I just put a new, faster motherboard into one of them, and I plan to get it onto the web when I have a spare weekend. But it's really just for fun; my main PC is about 20 times faster; I could run a Mac emulator on it and it would still be *so* much faster than any of my real Macs.

I've got three or four working PCs, three Macs (and two or three older Apples) plus a heap of older/broken machines. I live in a techno-tip.

They don't call him "Keeper of Computer Scrap" for nothing...

Giggle dagesh. Hope you're keeping well.
Where is that Journal of yours?

Much of the scrap dates back to when I had 20/20 vision; I used to repair computers for a living. Now, it's just too much trouble to drag down the stairs to the bin.

I've been planning to put the Macs on eBay for a couple of years now. Problem is I doubt I'd get much more than £5 for any of them.

My son would be devastated to hear that. We have strict instructions not to throw any Mac hardware away so I still preserve my first SE and one of the early models of portable Macs, which weighs a ton and which we had to carry back from Canada. The things mothers do for love! have you written to your mother?
So the attic is full of holy relics. Add to that a Mercedes engine which also weighs a ton and is stored in an outhouse and which he will take apart, "one day". Pah!

He's always on at me to upgrade my iMac. But I'd rather spend themoney on eBay and buy useless art deco glass.

Martine, I'm so glad to see you belong to the club of People Who Know Better You've gone up in my estimation - though you were already pretty high up the list (grovel grovel)

None of my Mac machines are under ten years old. The one I just upgraded was a 75MHz PPC, but is now a ~200MHz PPC. The HDD has the wrong OS, but I have a replacement HDD with the proper OS (7.6?) sitting on top of a box by my left elbow.

My "main" PC is an AMD Athlon 64/3000 with a Gigabyte of DRAM and 180 Gigabytes of HDD.

Have you ever watched Steve Jobs presenting new stuff? it vies with the Grand Prix when son is around.

Bill Gates is more entertaining; when he got the second "Blue Screen of Death" I laughed till I nearly sh*t!

I haven't seen either of them presenting.

The blue screen of death... while he was presenting? Now that WOULD be a good laugh.

Peet, practical question for you. How do you manage for power outlets? Do you have masses of adaptors and strips, or did you get an electrician in to install more sockets? I only have one computer in my attic den but I find that with the radio and lighting etc (and modem, and printer, and computer speakers etc) I need two double sockets, and even then I have eight plugs going into two sockets via 2 adaptors.

There's a 14-way powerstrip behind the monitors, strictly reserved for things that take less than 2 amps each and with no more 2/3rds of the outlets used. There's a 4-way on the floor that takes care of any "Transformer blocks", since the 14-way uses "twist to fit" plugs. There's a large UPS under the desk powering the "main" PC, with outputs for three more should they be required.