I dont even want to talk about the problems I’ve had this weekend, but I suppose to explain the rest of my weekend thus far I have to give a bit of background.

So the ram was just at the wrong setting right? No it was the power supply! Wait, maybe I have a bad processor, that MUST be it! Yeah, my problems did not end friday, I took all the parts out of the computer friday night because Myk wanted to take a look at the board, to see if he could find any shorts or anything. I got drunk and watched MST3K. This has all just been so stressful… So we finally decided that the problems we have been having were most likely caused by the processor. I woke up saturday morning with a killer hangover, and I surfed the web a bit, and decided I’d just go to CompUSA and pick up a new processor (Myk has a 2.0 ghz processor in his computer, but the last thing I wanted to do was chance messing that one up by putting it in my board). So at about 2 yesterday afternoon, when I was finally dressed, I headed up to CompUSA. It was crazy busy there, apparently they were having a big “12 hour sale” or something. Anyway I finally snagged a sales person out of the half dozen running around. The sales guy looked strangely familiar, but I’ll get to that later. I bought the pentium 4 ($250, GAH), and came home. So we put the chip in and started a redhat install. It got pretty far… then some sort of spur error (I guess this is what had been happening all along to cause the crashes during compile). Which leads me to believe it is the motherboard. At this point I was completely stressed out. Frustrated beyond belief because everything SHOULD have worked! It was compatible! But now, because of faulty ram, or a faulty motherboard, it’s all just gone to hell. And I could return it all and get replacements, I dont know, any problem could have damaged my other parts. So we’re just going to send it all back, pay the restocking fee (like $60 plus fedex shipping) and be done with this all. I should have known I could not pull off this building my own computer thing! I’m just going to wait a few months and get a kickass Christmas special Dell. At least this way I will have old r2 for a nice little backup system *pats r2*

None the less, was quite depressed about this whole ordeal, I was really looking forward to getting a nice, new, fast computer and now it’s all just been shot down. So I packed up the new CompUSA pentium and while it dawned on me who the sales guy reminded me of, AND had the same first name of (all that was on his nametag was his first name). See a few months back a guy with the nick “TorchDragon” IM’ed me on ICQ (I don’t usually respond to random people) said he lived in the area and was trying to get people to come to an annual LAN party. HAH! Like I’d trust some random guy on ICQ enough to bring myself and my computer to a said meeting place for a “LAN party”. Not to mention he did the whole “wow you are a geek girl *drool*” routine on me, and as flattering as it is I am really not interested %) So I was really cautious, and considered just ignoring him after that. But I didn’t, and we kept talking, he even came into #13thHour for a couple months, sometimes played UT and stuff. It really turned out to be fun. Still, even though he lives in the area I was again, very cautious about meeting him, like I usually am with online people. I’d have to meet him in a public place (with Myk of course, I wouldn’t go alone), and the opportunity just never arose. Plus around mid september he stopped coming around so much and we sorta started losing touch. And I can say, unfortunately, that it didn’t bother me a whole hell of a lot, I meet a lot of people online and some just naturally grow distant, I can’t hang on to every cool person I meet. Anyway, this salesperson had the same name, and sorta looked like the pictures I had seen of TorchDragon… so I went back to CompUSA, and while in line for my return the same salesguy walked up and said “aw didnt work out?” (on my previous visit I had told him a bit of my problems). I was like “naw, must not be the processor… uh… permit me, you look strangely familiar… what’s your last name?” BINGO! I was completely floored. Last I knew he didn’t have a job. I stammered a bit through my shock and managed to say “OH WOW NO WAY!! I’m PrincessLeia2!!! Lyz!! You TorchDragon!!!” He looked pretty shocked too and was like “WOA!!! YOU’RE KIDDING!!!” So we stood there for a few seconds with our mouths hanging open, then just started to laugh and make comments about how weird this all was. Of all the sales people working that day, I just happened to get the attention of the one that I knew from online, it was very strange indeed.. and even stranger that I was brave enough to ask his last name, I don’t think I usually would have, it was very out of character for me. So for the half hour I stood in the return line we talked, it was really cool, caught up on how we were doing, talked about computers (mostly graphics cards), we talked a bit about Gentoo (he uses linux, but not on his workstations, so he wasnt familiar with the coolness of Gentoo, hehe), and he invited me to “Winterfest” the winter version of the LAN party he hosts… to which I responded “yeah me and what computer?!” which caused a bit of a chuckle, hehe. So I got everything returned and we agreed to hang out sometime (next time not at his workplace), so it was really cool. And meeting him was probably the only thing that made me *not* cry when I got home from CompUSA yesterday afternoon (honestly, I was heartbroken over the whole computer thing).

So this whole meeting lead me to do a lot of thinking about coincidences and fate. I’m not a particularly religious person, I could barely even call myself spiritual unless I am in the mood. But while we were at the store the guy who was at the returns desk, who had seen this whole strange chance meeting said “hey, maybe it was fate”. And I considered all the coincidences that lead up to this meeting, all the things I did that I wouldn’t normally have done, and they really do add up. So maybe there is something to this whole fate thing afterall… maybe this was some sort of sign that this person will somehow become important to me, or vice versa, and in the whole scheme of things it would really suck if I let him go (this is all friend basis, I am sure you all know how hopelessly in love I am with Myk). So just in case I think TorchDragon and I should renew our friendship… and when I came home and told Myk about what happened he was like “Cool! We gotta have him over sometime!” So I think it’ll work out quite nicely %) Maybe we can invite him to a lan party or something in the near future, and maybe I’ll have my new computer by the time Winterfest rolls around and we can consider going to that.

Getting back to my computer problems… some good did come out of this %) After we got r2 all put back together and running (and it works fine so it was definately a problem with ram or motherboard, not any of my old stuff) we decided to put Debian on it. We didn’t even consider putting Gentoo on because of it’s outragous compile time, if it takes 5 hours or so on a 2 ghz machine I dont even want to know how poor r2 would take it %) So no more bloated Red Hat for me YAY! Debian is pretty cool so far, the apt-get system is really sweet, much better than wandering around finding rpm’s anyway… and I think I will learn a great deal because I really have to pay attention to what I need on my system, since I will have to install it piece by piece, not like with redhat that has half the linux world preinstalled ;) Hopefully I won’t break *too* many things over the next few days, so ole’ r2 will be ready for that LAN party on saturday. Heh, anyway I have been using linux for about 10 months now, I guess it’s time to move away from “newbie” redhat, hehe.

I guess I’ll go noew, there is still a lot of customizing I have to do with my system, and I want to do most of it while Myk is home so he can help me when I break things beyond my capabilities to repair, hehee. *wanders off into the wonderful new world of Debian Land*