It gets worse! (by alaric)

Well, my rough week has now reached seven days - it started last Wednesday - and is still going strong.

The late hardware arrived, but it doesn't work - with just the CPU on the motherboard (which came preinstalled in the case), and either of the two DIMMs in either of the two sockets, it doesn't start executing the BIOS. So either the CPU or the mobo is probably dead. I'll try running it with no DIMMs in; if the DIMMs are both bad (or, more likely, wrong for the motherboard) then the thing should at least complain about the memory error - assuming the BIOS is written to run the POST purely from registers, until it's tested the RAM.

Tomorrow I will order new parts, and play the combinations game until I get it working.

And on top of that, I had a horrible cough Monday and Tuesday, which I'm just getting over.

Oh, and did I mention that the dishwasher is broken, and Jean is unhappily teething, so poor Sarah is struggling with the domestic workload? There's now heaps and bags of washed and unwashed clothes all around the place, I'm out of clean underwear, the kitchen is starting to smell, and there's very few clear flat surfaces (floors, tables, worktops, chairs, ...) in the entire house.

Bleargh!

When we've been paid for the current project, I'm going to start by tidying the whole house. Then looking after Jean so Sarah can have a break. Then buying some nice books, reading them, and sleeping lots.

A rough week (by alaric)

Bah!

I've had a horrible past week.

Read more »

Nooooo! Van!!! (by alaric)

Just had a phonecall from the friend who was borrowing our lovely van - he was just driving it back, when it made rattling noises, so he pulled over and now it won't start 🙁

The fear is that it may have run out of oil and seized, since it has a known propensity to get through oil fast (as many old diesels do). However, no warning light came on.

Please be OK, van!

= UPDATE =

Looks like it did run out of oil; the engine's all seized up inside.

However, luckily, Sarah's uncle is a mechanical engineer, and has managed to find us a nice Transit engine that's even newer than the one in the van - and he can install it for us! So the van is going to have something of an upgrade to a turbo diesel engine - a new lease of life...

Phew!

Religion (by alaric)

A friend visited over the weekend, and we got chatting about religion, which got me bringing out my copy of the Tao Te Ching.

I liked the philosophy of the Tao Te Ching; my translation tried to preserve the translator's interpretation of the meaning of the text into modern English, which makes it pretty approachable; I know that I'm going to be missing some of the 'original meaning', but I won't get that unless I learn ancient Chinese, so so be it. But either way, it was pretty close to the philosophy of life I'd developed myself.

And yet, I can see how people can turn it into a religion. The Tao Te Ching, as I read it, is about the fact that the universe is a large complex system full of interrelationships and feedback loops and so on; that attempts to take control of it aggressively will tend to lead to failure, since it is not something you can master, and that success is to be had in seeing yourself as a part of this complex system (ecosystem, economy, society, ...) and striking a balance between letting it carry you around in its eddies and gently guiding yourself in the way you want, while accepting that your guidance is merely guidance and not absolute control, and that the gentler your guidance is the more effective it is likely to be - and the less extreme the side effects.

However, somebody with a different mindset could read the text and see "the Tao" as meaning "an omnipresent sentient God". My interpretation of "the Tao" is something more akin to "chaos theory".

My visiting friend had heard from somewhere that Taoism was a 'bit scary', and I confessed that despite having avidly enjoyed the Tao Te Ching, I really had no idea how "modern Taoism" worked as a religion, so I did a bit of research.

Rotten.com's writeup on Taoism seems quite good - as I had suspected, some folks had gone and converted a philosophy into a religion. Sigh. There are Taoist temples?

A state may be ruled by (measures of) correction; weapons of war may be used with crafty dexterity; (but) the kingdom is made one's own (only) by freedom from action and purpose. How do I know that it is so? By these facts:--In the kingdom the multiplication of prohibitive enactments increases the poverty of the people; the more implements to add to their profit that the people have, the greater disorder is there in the state and clan; the more acts of crafty dexterity that men possess, the more do strange contrivances appear; the more display there is of legislation, the more thieves and robbers there are.

The Tao Te Ching, verse 57

Amen, brother!

Nostalgia (by alaric)

This morning, I went downstairs. It was chilly, and the light outside was slightly grey. I lit the fire.

This brought about intense nostalgia!

My mother's house was mainly heated by fireplaces, so this is the kind of thing I would have been doing on non-school days during late autumn and winter when I was a kid. And for some reason, I've always liked this time of year more than the summer. It's a time for staying indoors, looking out into the twilight, as I worked on exciting projects, alone or with my friend Lorenz.

It also reminds me of a time when computer games were more fun. Indeed, I was struck by a strong desire to play StarGoose.

Looks like I'll have to resurrect my 486 and install DOS, though...