I’ll be out of town until Sunday. Regular blogging will commence at that time.

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I spent the majority of yesterday staring at this:

See that tiny sliver of window? See the beautiful sunshine? Yeah, I did, too. But there was nothing for it - I had to finish this computer thing.

The upgrade to Vista Ultimate crapped out (2 hours). So I had to reinstall Vista from the beginning (2 hours). Then I had to download and install 47 critical updates (1 hour) and 49 recommended updates (1 hour). Most of the non-critical updates failed to install. I’ll deal with that later.

The one nice thing I can say is that the Vista Ultimate reinstall preserved my files intact. The first thing I do when I start working with a computer - the very first thing - is create a directory C:\home (old habits die hard). That’s where I put all my files. And lo, after the reinstall completed - they were all still there. That was nice.

I spent the majority of today installing all my various programs and getting them set up. As you can see, I’m only about halfway through the checklist:

But you know what? After having spent almost 40 hours over the last week, it finally WORKS. Well enough for me to transfer over my workload. (I even got my mail program to run better than before, with the proper SMTP server!)

Along the way, I discovered that:

1. Photoshop “you don’t have enough privileges” error: open Photoshop by right-clicking on the icon and choosing “run as administrator.”

2. Trillian failing to log chats: ask it to log in a directory you created by hand.

3. Vista doesn’t recognize iPod: soft boot your iPod and try again.

Mac users, I can already feel your mouse pointer sliding towards the “comment” button. Having been a professional* Unix/Linux sysadmin for nearly a decade, I know where you’re coming from. If it was viable for me to not use Windows, believe me, I wouldn’t be.

I still wouldn’t use a Mac, though. Three grand for a computer? You must be joking. I could buy a car for that.

I recommend Ubuntu for desktops, and FreeBSD for servers. When someone asks.

In other successes, I guess the fifth time’s the charm? Glove 5.0 fits fairly well!

I can’t really puzzle out how you’re supposed to solve the problem with the finger crotch holes. Those giant holes that result when you cast on stitches to bridge the gap between the front and the back of the glove. For Glove 5.0 I just sewed them shut as best I could. (Not so easy to work a seam in the finger crotch, believe me.) Surely there must be a better solution?

And now: on to Glove 6.0, installing WinSCP, porting over my Outlook archives, changing the Putty defaults to my liking (text white on black instead of the default gray, scrollback buffer = 9,000 lines, no terminal bell)… oh man, forget it. I’ve had enough for one day.

* i.e. not just a hobbyist - I have worked 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, doing nothing but working with Unix (and Linux to a lesser extent) for many many years. 75% BSD Unix**, 15% Red Hat, 10% Solaris.

** An operating system so great, Apple wrapped a pretty skin around it and called it OS X. Truth!

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Yesterday I obtained a copy of the Vista Ultimate upgrade. This will fix my little networking problem. I wish it would fix all my other little problems, but I guess you have to start somewhere.

The Vista Ultimate box is swoopy and neat-looking. But it’s hard to figure out how to get it open. Instead of redesigning the box so that it’s easy to open, Microsoft added a sticker with pictograms explaining how to open the box. However, the sticker is designed and applied such that it’s very difficult to read.

This encapsulates the Vista experience perfectly.

Currently, not one program (out of the dozen or so that I use regularly) is working correctly. I synced my iPod once, and the computer subsequently refuses to acknowledge its existence. Firefox refuses to import my password file. Trillian isn’t logging my chat conversations. ITunes just insisted that my “Purchased” playlist must be split in half and burned to two CDs, even though by its own admission the playlist is only 620MB, and I inserted a 700MB disc. (I was too tired to argue. Two CDs it is.)

Time spent setting up new computer so far: 22 hours. Time remaining until deadline when new computer must be ready to take on 100% of my workload: 3.5 days.

I feel like life is fighting me at every step. Even knitting has vexed me. Here’s the second draft of that right-handed glove:

I knit this one using Ann Budd’s “Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns.” The palm is too long, and too wide. The fingers are too short, and too narrow. The thumb gusset (that’s just the gusset - theoretically one would pick up those stitches and knit the thumb proper) is about three times too large in each dimension.

I was hoping that maybe it just wasn’t fitting because I was making a men’s size M. (Ignore the fact that I have big hands, and usually wear a men’s size M.) But yesterday I had a male friend try it on, and it didn’t fit him any better than it fit me.

This is not the first time that row gauge has tripped me up with a pattern from this book. I once knit a mitten that would fit a sad mutant baby. Although I agree that sad mutant babies deserve mittens just as much as regular babies, I was aiming for a regular mitten.

Hey, you know what works? Dishcloths.

“Ninepatch” dishcloth from Mason-Dixon Knitting, Peaches & Creme yarn in “Chocolate” and “Celery.”

You’re right. I’m stalling. I should quit blogging, and start with the upgrade.

Push the button, Frank.

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