As far back as I can remember, I wanted a computer of my own.
The first computer I was given wide latitude upon was my mother’s Apple IIc. Arguably, my experiences on it fundamentally broke me for all future computing. After it died, the first time, I got time on an XT.
The first machine I had exclusive control over was a 386. By that point, I had stolen time on computers wherever and whenever I could. And, I had accessed the Internet thanks to the lax network security at the University of Washington. I found Linux. I named the 386: “fuzzy toilet”
I’ve since standardized my naming scheme: women I had crushes on and got nowhere with.
Years and women passed. The last desktop I purchased was in 1999. She was dubbed Tara. And, with her, I learned that data is more important than the hardware containing it.
The originally purchased hardware for Tara doesn’t exist. The motherboards, CPUs, hard drives, video cards, sound cards, network cards, keyboards, mice, and monitors have all warn out and been replaced. Many times. But, the original installation of Linux on Tara still exists.
scott@tara:~$ [0] ls -al .bash_logout
-rw-r–r– 1 scott scott 24 1999-07-20 19:09 .bash_logout
That’s a heart warming story of a boy and his computer.
But, Scott got older and finally started outgrowing Tara. My friend William pressured me into purchasing a laptop. The day I installed Ubuntu on Geneva was the last day of my preferred use of desktops. It was a matter of time before I transitioned completely:
scott@tara:~/.gaim/logs$ [0] find ./ -name ????-??-??.*.txt -printf “%f\n” | sort | tail -1 | cut -c -10
2005-05-31
Which left Tara as a server. E-mail, web, storage, shell and long running tasks. Damn, girl!
But, for the last three years I’ve been neglectful. Yes, there are backups. And monitoring. However, I don’t exactly feel comfortable with a large part of my life sitting on machine with no eyes on it and hardware older than children that can speak.
Which is a very long way of saying I’ve been transitioning my services off Tara. To other members of my increasing harem. And, this gives me an excuse to talk about virtualization.
Stay tuned.
Leave a Reply