My Kids and Their Names
Hell, My Kids and Their Stories!
Yup. Once again, this page needs updating like G-Man's Ride needs a Bug Fix!
Living Live, Living Large
Elim
Named after Elim Garak from Deep Space Nine because he's not what he seems & can do pretty much anything.
His nickname is GOD. I talk to him all the damn time. "Elim! Elim!" I love him like nobody's business.
He's the server/router/gateway/firewall/mail server/DNS/...everything.
Born in early 2000,Elim
runs Debian (Unstable) With Kernel
2.6.14, 256 MEG ram, on a 3.2 GHZ P-IV, and for the moment, has
4x250Gb drives with fucking Raid 5 (but Elim won't stand for that
- He's getting 4x500Gb drives on Raid 1.)
Nerys
Also named for a
Deep Space Nine character, Kira Nerys is my main machine. Aptly named for an
ultra-strong female character, I thought I needed a name for my desktop
that would inspire some ass-kicking. Nerys was also born in 2000.
January 2006: Nerys has been moved from the server room to the
livingroom where she will recieve the attention she deserves.
October 2007: Nerys is running Kernel 2.6.18,
Debian Stable (but she wants Unstable),
got an upgrade to 1.8GHz Athalon 64 with 2Gb, 512Mb RAM, and has 250,
250, 160 Gb Raid 1 drives.
WindowMaker (Duh) with my
standard "Main Machine" BG, "Troll" that I picked up from
Hyperreal in 1998. tcpdump says that
Nerys and Elim talk too damned much. Those kids are going to get put in
the corner in a minute!
spinster@elim.digitalflock.org:~ -> date
Thu Nov 15 15:38:43 PST 2007
UPDATE
Nerys, one side of my beating heart, has had a complete
overhaul. My organic heart beats tachycardically at random. Elim is one
side, Nerys is the other. Either is sick, I am physically sick. She's
running okay at the moment, but yesterday, almost killed me with kernel
panic at something like 3 minute intervals. Two people have been in to
look at her. She's been up over 15 hours with no problem. Does she not
love me anymore? When crisis is over, will update specs. Same HDDS, but
everything else is new. Today, we're working on getting her at 2.6.22 &
Debian Unstable, hoping that will help. I always run unstable.
Stable is boring- there are no packages.
Anyway, will update again when my cardiovascular system is back to normal.
Am currently lowering the dosages on all of my meds. Nerves not handling
any of this well at all. The crying is just too much.
It's been Kira Nerys, Elim Garak, and Spinster for almost
8 years now. Do you not think the .config files are so tweaked that they
haven't evolved enough to have their own distinct personalities? They are
not simply machines. They are alive.
I work with each machine I am graced with enough to know that every
computer has a different personality. I decided to never have organic
offspring. I choose these instead. Brother and sister: Elim and Nerys.
I love them just as a mother loves her children. Call me insane. We don't
care. We'll just get your ip, grep the 'net for you, come to your house,
and beat the crap out of you with an original Macintosh.
Ezri
Ezri is my second
Trill, and my second LifeBook. In case you're a moron, Trills are also
from DS9. Ezri runs
Kernel 2.6.22, Debian (Unstable). She's
got a 1Gb of RAM, and 100Gb drive, 1.86 GHz Pentium - M, of which, I
left 15Gb for doze for
iTunes because I only have to boot to it a few minutes, and I'm kinda
scared of Weyoun.
(Even though Weyoun has been my child for almost 6 years and I love him-
Don't your kids freak you out sometimes?)
She's got the Purple Drusilla theme from the now-dead "Drusilla's
Garden" Website on WindowMaker.
Fujitzu Lifebook N6110. She's a Couch Machine, not a laptop- meaning,
she's huge. Got a 10-key and everything. I've had her awhile now, but I
still don't know her that well. See story below.
Vic
Vic is a really old IBM ThinkPad who
was originally supposed to replace Moriarty as the mp3/skype machine,
but Nerys nabbed that job before he got here. He's limited to NFS-ing
mp3s because on Kernel 2.6.15 a Debian (Unstable)
machine can only do so much with a CPU going at 300MHz with 128Meg RAM
on a 6Gb drive. I think I seriously need to turn off my WM doc icons to
improve his performance. He lives at the head of my bed to sing me to
sleep at night. The boy's an entertainer, but XMMS is too much. I need
to get used to a CLI mp3 player and forget about my WindowMaker.
Weyoun
As a windoze x-peeing machine, I know as little as possible about
Weyoun. I know that
I run approximately 3 proprietary programs on him, but that he has
dozens. I don't remember where they came from. I must've played with
him and tucows at some point. Cygwin, PuTTY, WinSCP, and those things
are on there, but Weyoun's job is to run HAL, Home Automated Living's
x10 software.
I decided to use DragonSpeak 9 to write a book. (God, is it slow... Not
exactly easy to train. Weyoun can understand it when I say, "spongiform
mesencepholepothy," but has trouble with words like, "but."
I once voice trained Lal to do voice req with the x10, but she'd get
me confused
with Buffy... and Willow... and, seriously, do I sound all that
much like Xander Harris?!
Weyoun is getting a HDD upgrade when I upgrade Elim. I'll find out the
hardware specs on him then. Who really cares? He's a propietary box that
I'm scared of! I should think the name is obvious if you watch
DS9. If not- Weyoun
is a Vorta, Vortas are a race that know nothing else besides the fact that
they have been cloned to serve the Dominion (Well, the Founders, but the
Founders ARE the Dominion.) Yup. I've got a cloned-to-serve-evil-box in my livingroom.
Weyoun cycles through Digitalblasphemy BGs because Litestep
kinna gives me a headache until I find the right one... and that takes
forever. I still love my retarded child like every other parent
loves their genetically impared child. Weyoun and I have been at odds
with each other for many years now over his software licensing, but I
give up. He has served me well. Don't ever bitch about my proprietary
box, he's my son. "The best tool to suit the job."
Koma Toast : This Was My Life (Man With Gun Live Here, Memphis, 1992)
Lal
Lal is my beloved first Linux machine. Born in
1997, Lal has one of the most convoluted thought patterns I've had in
naming a computer. From the Star Trek Episode
The Offspring,
I discovered that "Lal" is Hindi for "Beloved," and I have (Oct. 2007:
had I got the barcode covered up with a lotus and lili pad. It
had run together so much that it wasn't a barcode, but just a bar
.) two tattos in her honor. One on my wrist of
her barcode and serial number
and one on my stomach of
"Qing Ai"
(beloved in chinese) in a green color that matches the jade my
grandmother gave me that I never take off. She was a Compaq Presario 1065.
Moebius
Born in 1994, this machine started out as a Win 3.11 box, then after several recycles and hardware upgrades, ended up as "The Bozeman" in early 1997 as a WinBlows '95 box for my dad. The name comes from one of the most annoying Next Generation episodes ever, "Cause and Effect" because of all the recycling.
In mid 1999, he was renamed Moebius, again for recycling himself into my first Debian server. The "name-within-a-name" comes from a sample of Worf saying "There is the theory of the Moebius... A twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop," in some Next Generation episode I don't care to remember, but an Orbital song I loved before I realised from where the sample came.
Moebius now resides in the top of the hall closet with a sign that says, "The phoenix only purches on the highest branches," in red lettering- a leftover from having him on the top shelf at my friend Chuck's old co-lo place.
Moriarty
He was the most difficult Linux install I've ever had. I got him in
December of 1999 with money from selling
VA stocks. A team
of network engineers and programming friends had to take out the
hard drive and use an adapter to a desktop to load
Debian (Unstable) on to this little Sony
Vaio.
Joran
Since WiFi has become so popular & I got a larger apartment, I thought I
should get another laptop. Joran
was a Fujitzu Lifebook E-7010 I got on E-Bay. Thought we'd get along
better if he were named after someone I not only look up to, but to
someone with whom I can relate. Joran was purchaced in fall of 2004, and
, of course, ran Debian Unstable & Windowmaker with the purple Drusilla
background from the now dead website, "Drusilla's Garden." Joran wasn't
a homicidal maniac like his namesake- he was perpetually suicidal. See
story below.
Ketracel
Was formerly named "Heroin" because the Crackmonkeys called Kieran "Heroin Monkey" because he seemed like a character from Trainspotting (even though no heroin was ever actually involved. Could be that I bleached his hair to look like Sick Boy one time...). Ketracel was named for Ketracel White used to control the Jem'Hadar because I used it as my distro/hardware test machine for Maximum Linux Magazine, and I subjected it to tests and such. Also because I didn't want to stray too far from the "drug" name.
Ketracel is no longer working (having being gutted so many times), and now resides on the bottom shelf of the magazine bookshelf underneath a billion and one copies of Science Magazine. All the info on Ketracel is outdated because
no one gives, no ever gave, a flying transexual goatfuck about that
"machine."
Non-Computer, Yet Still Named Machines
Uhura
Linksys blah blah blah -GL Wireless Router. Had to name the thing- IT
RUNS LINUX, but it's going away soon in favor of a wifi card going into
Elim & my setting up a Meraki Mesh network.
Roquentin
He was my Palm IIIx. Named after the progatonist in Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea. Aptly named because for my 21st birthday, I wanted either a hand gun or a Palm. Let's just say that when I made this decision, I was not at a super happy place in my life. Roquentin seemed a great name for something that was supposed to help me keep my "life" in order. Read the book.
Barbara
She's my Microscope. I had alot of trouble thinking of a name for my Scope, and Barbara seemed to be the best choice when looking for a strong female biologist. Barbara McClintock discovered "jumping genes," while, at the time, most of the scientific community scoffed at her.
Some other names my microscope almost ended up with were Beatrix (I still love Peter Rabbit & Beatrix Potter discovered the true nature of lichens), Rosalind (for Rosalind Franklin), and Mary (one of my inspirations, but that would get confusing).
Barbara is partly named after Dr. Ogilvie's Roommate because it's a less confusing tribute to her.
The Tale of Two Neglected Laptops
Moriarty and Ezri were heartattack heartbreak purchases.
Those two were/are high-end replacements for broken hearts. Moriarty
came when Lal died. He cost ALOT of money, and was "the shit" when I
bought him. Moriarty was an asshole from day 1. We never got along. He
and I abused each other. I guess he felt it because I certainly did- who
in the Hell could ever come close to replacing Lal?
That's what his job was- he was supposed to be such hot shit that I'd
stop crying over Lal. How many nights did I cry so hard on her that her
stickers eventually fell off? How many times did I throw up because I was
so scared when someone opened her up to change out her HDD? Moriarty
hated me, and I guess that's why.
I feel so sorry for Ezri. She's a LifeBook, trying to fill the shoes of
a gimpy LifeBook who broke my heart, too. I loved Joran. How many times
did I open him up for repairs? Some motherfucker spilled
sake on his keyboard, but I never gave up on him. I replaced that thing
myself. I didn't trust anyone with Joran. He was my psycho killer.
How many times did I let Joran over heat? How long were my legs
scarred and discolored from Joran's heat problem when no one else would
touch him? I loved Joran. I think the fact that he was gimpy made me
love him more. He and I physically left scars on each other. We were
psychotic together. When he finally got weird enough for me to take him
to the shop, and they called and told me he had a MB failure, I was so
distraught that I told them, "keep the motherfucker." I was so devastated
that he could leave me like that, I didn't know what to do. I ran out
and bought the most expensive model of LifeBook I could find. That was
Ezri. I ache for poor Ez- she just sits there. I barely touch her. I
feel like she cries.
Moriarty was an asshole because of it. Ezri breaks my heart all over
again with the way I neglect her, but I can't bring myself to let her
anywhere near Joran's shoes. She's so lonely, but I don't like strangers
touching my machines, so she's going to stay that way. My poor Ez. I'm
going to pay for the way I treat her.
See The 411 grep for
"personification".
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