From: "Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com>
Newsgroups: alt.slack
Date: Wed, Jan 29, 2003 5:09 PM
These Time-Saving Computers
or
"INVALID EXTENT FILE PEOF 3, 0"
Tuesday 2 pm
They save themselves GOBS of time. By BREAKING. Mine
has me just
sitting here spinning my wheels, waiting while my main
program drive,
Muleskinner II, undergoes a "read-write/verify
& repair SURFACE SCAN"
session.
I have a sneaking suspicion that it will PASS with flying
colors, which
is BAD news, because I would much rather it say, after
3 hours of
scanning, "Well, I found these 37 bad blocks on
the drive, so I have
cordoned them off, never to be used again," because
then I'd know what
was going on. If it PASSES, that means the problem is
bigger than
anything soft or electronic can fix, and I'll have to
get TOUGH and
REFORMAT the whole 20 gigs, and re-install the two-system
Mac system,
and then run tests on THAT, just to be SURE that it's
totally FUCKED.
I am tempted to just go straight to that, "Oh,
it's FUCKED" stage and
toss it, but I cannot let what was ONCE a $350 doohicky
die without
first spending a couple of days trying to salvage it.
PRAISE BE TO THE DONATORS!! -- for, though Muleskinner
II might be
hosed, I'm not, because, wouldn't you know it, Rev.
Bar Sinister
donated a 20 GB ATA drive a year ago, "Muleskinner
3," which is
perfectly good, and sitting on a shelf in a box! --
because Rev.
Kucharo donated an 80-GB hard drive which replaced it,
and which has
allowed us to start making videos again. Or trying to
anyway.
AND, because the Gription Clench in NC donated a DVD
burner, I was able
to BACK UP EVERYTHING... AGAIN. Which frees me to tear
wildly into
those drives as if they were balky car engine parts
that need to be
hammered loose a bit before they can be yanked and dunked
in gasoline
or whatnot. WANTONLY, without superstitious fear of
breaking things.
The irksome part is that these various tests take a
long time, during
which my main machine is down. Because I still haven't
resolved my
external CD burner replacement situation, I can't use
Old Muleskinner
1, a 7500 Mac, to copy this week's Hour of Slack, itself
just a rerun
of an (INCREDIBLE) Susie the Floozy "SubGenius
War" show from WREK. I'm
typing this on Princess Wei's antique computer. (There
is also an
office PC but the damn thing is SLOW, slow. Old, slow.
Clunky. Ugly.
(Windows ME.))
BUT, betwixt the gripings and waitings, I had to MARVEL
at WHAT I WAS
GRIPING ABOUT. That this DVD burner was taking SO LONG
-- to do what?
TO COPY ABOUT HALF THE WORDS I *AND YOU* EVER WROTE,
*AND* a literal
TREASURE in the turn of the century's greatest software
marvels
(Photoshop, 3D progs, video and sound mixing stuff,
pornography-fetching machines), AND all this FUCKING
artwork by these
FUCKING brilliant maniacs -- COPYING ALL OF THAT onto
ONE THREE DOLLAR
DISK... and I was COMPLAINING that it was TAKING TOO
LONG.
It's all relative, I guess.
WHAT TIME SAVERS these computers are. If my car got
as much attention
as my computer gets, it would probably go as fast as
the computer. EVEN
SLOWER THAN NOW, in other words.
So I have been calling relatives, hanging artwork, boning
up on geek
crap, and STILL reading those horrible Isaac Asimov
"Foundation And
Robot" novels. GOD was that guy a terrible writer.
You get to where you
can foresee the whole plot of each book, all the way
down to the
"surprise" ending, like Hari Seldon and his
Prime Radiant predicting
future history MATHEMATICALLY for the next 1,000 years.
The minute some
clumsy, doltish character is introduced for what appears
to be comedy
relief only, that's when you KNOW it's either the Good
Robot or the
Super Telepath who will save the day at the last minute
by having been
manipulating everything secretly all along. Secretly
to anyone who
hasn't already read a couple of these novels, anyway.
All explained in
long monologues of rather FORCED logic that would rank
with Ayn Rand in
regularity, though not in kookish fervor.
BUT HAVE I STOPPED READING THIS JUNK??? NO!!! Not until
they're ALL
USED UP.
Everything will be FIXED, in the FUTURE. Once I get
my computer
revision chores done, the Muleskinners will ALL be interconnected,
and
ALL be on DSL, even Princess Wei's way down there on
the second floor.
And then I'll find out that, all along, the slick robots
REALLY WERE
dumpy, doltish comedy relief characters.
Before I started into this, I toyed with the idea of
NOT BREAKING my
equipment. IT WASN'T BROKEN, but I decided to fix it.
I am FORCED to
keep up with my SON, or at least try to, so as to keep
getting free
lance media geek jobs.
I have to learn interactive web programming -- PHP etc.
That's pretty
damn geeked out for somebody whose main tool was a Guillotine
Splicer
and an upright Moviola for a long time. If I stay in
Old Mac world
forever, I will eventually be like an OLD PERSON. and
will have to go
work in the hardware store like a retiree. Debtor's
prison.
I should go exercise or study my homework instead of
sitting here
blathering to you fellow geeks. Most of you SubGenii
are even less
technical minded than me and have no idea what I'm talking
about. The
rest are 20 years ahead of me and laughing at how slow
and doddering I
am.
The snow is a bit deep outside though. Already went
out twice --
learning the hard way the difference between DVD-RW
and DVD+RW. The
difference is, another trip to Office Max.
I have successfully made TWO data DVDs, though, one
with SubSITE, and
everything not yet ON SubSITE, and my System, and one
with all my
progs. PRAISE THE GRIPTION CLENCH!!
Once I get this crap grooving again, I will finally
get DVD masters
made of ARISE and Dobbsfilm Shorties (which already
has two new short
sequences added, by Codini and me). The part I'm NOT
especially looking
forward to is the DVD interface-making (DVD Studio Pro
is the prog)
which I know NOTHING about. NOTHING. NOTHING I TELL
YOU!!! I have only
had a DVD player for a few months and have put only
a few DVDs in it.
The one thing I have learned is to NOT have irritating
music looping
over the Menu.
I can see how one could spend a year putting EXTRA DETAILS
into an
ARISE DVD (like subtitles that identify EACH CLIP).
But I don't think
that "one" is me.
I wish that scan would hurry up and finish.
***
SURFACE SCAN: PASSED. As I thought. And yet the Volume
Structure STILL
is screwed no matter what. You can't mount it without
rebuilding the
entire desktop, and that doesn't "take." It
isn't remembering its
changes, and its last little shred of sanity KNOWS it
isn't sane. The
very MEDULLA OBLONGATA of this ATA drive must be blown.
Its SOUL is
still there to WHIMPER and BALK, though.
Drive speed is fine... whole surface is fine... files
are fine .... no
system conflicts... yet it's FUCK. Not "fucked"
but actually FUCK
itself. As in, "It's FUCK!" I guess it's "ABOUT
A DAID PUNK," to quote
Sterno quoting overheard poebuckers.
Now I'll wildly try restarting a couple more times and
then -- BLAMMO,
put the Magnet to the Muleskinner, and see if he CAN
BE given a NEW
BRAIN, or if it's time to bring his clone, Mule 3, from
the closet and
give him a chance.
The way I named these things and the Asimov series I've
been reading
make for an all the more poignant coincidence. ("The
Mule" is a Mutant
Mentat Villain in the Foundation series, who almost
takes over the
whole Galactic Empire.)
***
I had tried everything. Even updated the driver again
just to make
sure. Nothing. So...
I ERASED MULESKINNER'S MIND!
It's always a SICK THRILL to hit that "INITIALIZE"
button. It happened
so quickly, too. The doomed hard drive didn't even have
time to sing
"Daisy."
It was like taking an old dying dog out to the back
forty, giving him a
dog biscuit, patting him on the head saying "Poor
Ol' Thang, you been a
good boy," while moving around behind him and *suddenly
blowing his
brains out with a handgun when he's not looking,* to
put him out of his
misery fast.
A CLEAN SLATE, and yet a POIGNANT FAREWELL.
It fixed the problem. The drive seems to copy files
and reboot and test
normal, and no longer shows "INVALID EXTENT FILE
PEOF 3, 0" with every
drive repair! MULESKINNER II is REBORN, AFRESH, ANEW!
Like a clear-eyed
innocent newborn babe blinking in the sudden sunlight,
seeing the world
(OS 9.2.2) for the very first time. Soon OS 10.2 as
well -- a SPLIT
PERSONALITY.
For the next two or three days I will gradually RAISE
him to ADULTHOOD.
He won't look like he did before. He'll still have Dobbsheads
and
cartoon characters and monster faces festooning his
desktop face, but
they'll be in different arrangements, this time built
up around the OS
10.2 personality. His old 9.2 personality will usually
slumber,
existing only in the subconscious, hopefully being brought
forth only
for certain special old favorite programs and dingleberries
that never
made the leap into the New Old Age. Hopefully. I THINK
I have collected
enough replacements for my old stuff that I won't constantly
be
rebooting into 1999 just to make goofy psychedelic backgrounds
just
right.
This is exciting, unlike the last couple of days, which
made me smelly
with Suspense and Waiting Sweat. I don't know if this
is what a Sacred
Scribe is supposed to be doing, but actually it beats
working and I
guess I HAVE to do it if I'm gonna KEEP working. I just
wish I had that
OPTION, you know, of NOT WORKING AT ALL. "If I
had a million dollars, I
could ride the rails and live like a hobo." --
Rev. Ivan Stang
***
It's alive! It's alive! (7 pm)
Aww, it's so sweet, it wants to know my name and address
all over
again, and my IP passwords and everything. Isn't that
cute.
***
Now it is the next day, Wednesday, and after an expected
amount of
software updating, serial-replacing, re-installing and
rebooting, I
have my bare minimum crap all working just fine. I can
copy Hour of
Slack CDs, do email and news groups, do my "books,"
crack and hack
again. So far, that is all happening in old OS 9.2 still.
All day I
will be bumping things up to OS 10, app by app.
Last night, Wei and I turned on the touted Mac CD-MP3
player, iTunes,
and weren't impressed... especially... until we pushed
the button
marked "VISUALS."
THEN we were impressed. HOE-lee Fuucking Shit. Var Es
Der Drogs. These
morph-to-the-music light show programs have... uh...
come a long way.
We had to stop what we were doing and just stare at
the screen reacting
to Hour of Slack noise. For about half an hour.
That got me excited again.
***
My wife just came home with LEELA BOOTS! Now I'm REALLY excited.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: These Time-Saving Computers (long, for
MacSlackers)
From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>
"Rev. Ivan Stang" <stang@subgenius.com> wrote:
>I had tried everything. Even updated the driver
again just to make
>sure. Nothing. So...
>>I ERASED MULESKINNER'S MIND!
>..... MULESKINNER II is REBORN, AFRESH, ANEW! Like
a clear-eyed
>innocent newborn babe blinking in the sudden sunlight,
seeing the world
>(OS 9.2.2) for the very first time. Soon OS 10.2
as well -- a SPLIT
>PERSONALITY.
jep, computers are like people, but MUCH MUCH faster.
You can give
him a whole lobotomy and then COMPLETELY REEDUCATE him
in just a few
hours.
And it just takes them a couple months to a year at
most to develop
severe senility. It takes humans LONG WASTEFUL DECADES
to go
completely to shit like that.
--
"Well, fuck you too, chuckles!"
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Re: These Time-Saving Computers (long, for
MacSlackers)
From: S Williams <swilliams023@msn.com>
> Last night, Wei and I turned on the touted Mac
CD-MP3 player, iTunes,
> and weren't impressed... especially... until we
pushed the button
> marked "VISUALS."
I've put 7.50 GB of music into iTunes thanks to the
Visuals. Including "Hour
of Slack Classics, Library One", the playlist/titles
of which I supposedly
sent to the CDDB (tm) (which iTunes accesses for track
names etc; when
importing from CD) when I added it to my playlist last
week. If no data is
on the server, it will only list as "Track 1"
etc; w/ no artist listed.
You may want to check the CDDB and "Submit Track
Names" for your stuff that
already hasn't been.
BTW, did 'Rev Bar Sinister' send that 20GB ATA HD from
a dinky town called
Rockmart GA, if I may ask?
Original file name: These Time-Saving Computers (lo - converted on Monday, 21 July 2003, 13:44
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