Whee! Interwebs!

[active_apathy]

So, I've had shiny, pretty-decent Interwebs for... 33 hours now. And so far, everything I've downloaded has been legal - things like up-to-date OpenOffice.org, and Portal bought on Steam, and a long-awaited firmware update for iPolyhymnia, and virus definition files, and an adware scanner - things like that. Legal things.

Whatever is wrong with me?

I'm sure that tomorrow, someone's going to come by to take away my geek badge and my nerf gun.



But wait, it gets better. I have *checks* 11GB of free space post-Portal install. And a 20GB/month bandwidth quota. And - to top it all off - access to oodles of unmetered content. Like a MajorGeeks mirror. And an unmetered Steam cluster, so downloading things like Portal doesn't actually affect my limit.

Clearly, this is a problem.

So today, I went shopping, looking for something to use as a temporary place to shove files - something like a passport drive, or such. What I ended up buying was a 500GB internal drive, because, well, I could. This is my second ever SATA drive, and the first one came pre-installed in the machine. So, long-standing veteran of PATA cables that I am, I expected that the SATA cables would have the neat little second connector so that I could just plug it in.

And, they don't.

I'm sure that tomorrow, when I go to buy my shiny new supertransmitting supercable, the nice people at the shop can helpfully take away my geek badge and my nerf gun.



On the other hand, there's nothing quite like calling your old, superflaky dialup ISP to inform them that their services are no longer required. Especially while you're casually watching, say, 207 people standing very, very still. (See that? I still link instead of embedding, but now it feels cute rather than like an utter, utter pain.)

Fortunately, though, their script didn't make the poor phoneperson ask what I thought of their service. My complete and unabridged thoughts on the matter would probably sound rather like, say, Samuel L. Jackson and Gordon Ramsay having a heated argument.

Still, I can't help but wonder if that kind of frothy rage at dialup just might be enough to save my geek badge and my nerf gun...

Comments

[eighthcloud.livejournal.com]

This is a sign that something big is coming.


I just know it.



::puts on aluminum foil hat::

[annemjw.livejournal.com]

Man, I love improv everywhere, they just come up with such good ideas!

I share your internet joy! Not so long ago I went through internet joy for the first time. It was a very special episode of blossom moment.

[silmaril.livejournal.com]

Oh, Portal is a PC game? I was a sad puppy because I thought it was a new-generation console thing, which I do not own.

(Psst. Can you play it with keyboard and mouse only?)

[mrpyro.livejournal.com]

When I got my first broadband connection, Napster (and I mean real Napster, not the music selling version that's still around today) was still around: I think our household downloaded about a Gb of 'entirely legal' MP3s that day.

I didn't know that SATA cables only supported one drive until I built my first computer that used them; fortunately I'd only bought one drive to go in it, so embarrassment was avoided.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

It is! You can even get your own eerily-legal copy from here.

(Yes! You certainly can)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Hee. I just can't decide what I want from bittorrent yet, which is good, because I'm going to need somewhere to put it.

There's the thing! Add to it all that I've been using IDE drives since I was eleven, and... weird. Strange. And, at first, puzzling.

One day, someone brought up on SATA is going to look at a PATA cable and wonder what strange times they were, that one cable might support two devices.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

My internet joy will increase further when my line profile switches from ZOMGSUPERRELIABLE mode (at a whole 2.8mbps) to normal speed. *nods sagely*

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

*folds aluminium foil hat into aluminium foil pirate hat, then draws Jolly Roger on it*

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

PC and console versions are availiable

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to make sure you have a sata POWER cable as well!

My new box had 4 sata drive connectors (and only 1 IDE channel, supporting 2 devices), but the power supply only had one sata power cable, and SIX IDE power connectors.

I had to buy an IDE to SATA power cable.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

http://www.utorrent.com - BitTorrent client

http://www.torrentspy.com - good site, blocked to US users, but that's not you :)

http://www.torrentscan.com - meta-engine for searching most of the other big public torrent sites. TorrentSpy isn't on there because it blocks US traffic.

http://www.convivea.com/product.php?id=2 - Bit Che. Serves a similar purpose to TorrentScan, but instead runs as a standalone app. Does not search all sites that TorrentScan does, but DOES include TorrentSpy.

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I've been using µTorrent for... three months now, on dialup. This is my point: I get a reasonable connection, and then the piracy somehow stops for a couple of days. Or, rather, until I remembered that I haven't seen Razor yet.

But, thanks! :)

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

I knew I definitely had power cables - I've still got power available for two more devices. So, my shiny new 465GB volume is formatting right now.

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

Woe is me. I only have 74.5 + 298.1 GB