Alright. I just postulated this question to myself after I wrote an incredibly long post about 4 different subjects, and I'm going to ask you the same thing!

Should I, when I write posts, try to break subjects into their own posts? I usually have a lot of different things to blab pointlessly on and on about, and I'll drone on forever in a single really long post. Is this good or bad? I just considered two possible points:

1. When I write a really long post of multiple topics, I am more than likely going to go on a spiel about something nobody cares about (maybe something boring like how I washed a spider down the shower drain because it was attacking me or maybe something fiery about how liberals flubbed up the process of logic again), but it's in a long post of multiple topics, and they might just stop reading entirely. While I'm not necessarily shooting to maximize my reader base (I'm sure my friends will read the entire post anyway), it is something to consider.
2. Having so many topics in a single post makes it far harder to properly categorize and title. I was going to call the post I was just writing "A few things..." Yeah. That's really descriptive, isn't it. It was going to fall into the category of "General" instead of, say, "General" and "Movies". (I know Movies isn't a category at this time, but I think after this post it will be!)

Now for some counterpoints!

1. Since I usually prefer to wait a while and build up a bunch of stuff to talk about, I'll have a stretch of idle activity before WHAMMO! You have 200 small posts showing up in your RSS feed or on this site, and you might have to actually flip pages to see everything. While that isn't actually bad, it could potentially be annoying. It wouldn't be to me, I don't think, but it might to others.

Okay, uhm... So that's just one counterpoint! Regardless, I want some feedback! Which would you personally prefer? Don't give me what you think would be best... Give me what YOU WANT. I want to see how many people prefer which one. That being said, I'm going to break my multi-topic post into smaller posts and see how it works, and give you a taste of what it'll look like!

Okay, now that I've totally bored you with my blathering about Geek Squad, harddrives, USB and Ubuntu, here's a question for the masses...

I've been told by a few people that I should put my blog back on MystBlogs, so it'd be easier for them to read. I've never been real sure how many people read my blog, and how many people are Myst fans who regularly visit MystBlogs, so I've never really had a problem with not syndicating this blog. I figured whoever was really interested enough to read would visit.

The reason I'm still a little resistant to the idea of re-syndicating my blog is similar to the reason I left in the first place. Frankly, I have a tendency to post my views about controversial subjects and it really gets under the skins of a lot of people. I left MystBlogs because I didn't want to subject everyone going there for some easy reading to some deep, flaming approaching to immigration or the war on terrorism. I've come to face the facts that the Myst community is full of liberal-minded folks. (This time, I'm not using the term in a derogatory fashion, heh.) There's very few people who have agreed with me on my views, and there's a few people who will go out of their way to tell me how close-minded and insane I am.

I figured that most people didn't want to see that kind of stuff, so I pulled my blog off MystBlogs. If people actually wanted to deal with that, they could always come and read my posts by visiting my site!

So I guess the question is... How many people actually read this? How many people visit MystBlogs regularly? Would you be willing to see some fur-ruffling posts every now and then, if I did reapply?

I just wanted to let you all know why I'm not syndicated. I suppose if enough people came up with enough reasons why none of this matters, and I should just reapply anyway, then I probably will... I never really ever thought about it until recently.

So IM me, leave a comment, discuss it with me in chat...

Okay, so when it rains, it pours... My DVD writer ceases to write, so I had to buy a new one, which won't get here until Monday, because I'm sure they stamped "please, don't worry about rushing this" on the box.

Then, one day, I was watching the Simpsons, and my big harddrive (the one I put all my non-Windows files on) suddenly seized up and repeatdly went "whirrrr-CLUNK, whirrr-CLUNK" and nothing would work. In fact, my video froze and the computer died and everything was a mess... Oddly enough, I pulled the drive out, flipped it upside down, plugged it back in, and it works again, but now I'm afraid for the safety of my files. 200GB of random junk that I can't bear to part with, all at the mercy of the Clunk. So... Time to burn things to DVD! Woohoo! Oh, wait... The drive's broken.

Well, I can at least copy files off the harddrive, right? Windows Files Sharing for the win! So I share it and access it and... uhm... one of my 3D projects that hasn't been touched in over 3 years wouldn't copy because the file was, according to Windows, "read only or in-use". Since I was only trying to COPY, that error didn't really apply, but that's the message I got. An entire folder I'd long ago labelled "Backup", was this way. (This was the folder of everything I could absolutely NOT ever do without. Everything else was technically replaceable after much bandwidth, but not this.)

Great... Perfect, awesome. Folder locked down, harddrive failing, no DVD burner. So I try Windows Safe Mode! That'll surely unlock any files "in use"! Yes, sir, that it would... But, alas, it failed miserably. Safe Mode with Networking merited the same issues as a normal boot, and the files wouldn't copy, and I was very upset indeed.

I would simply use Linux to attempt to share the harddrive on my network! It was a logical choice, seeing as how Windows was doing something odd. Unfortunately, the Linux LiveCD I had was an old version of Ubuntu, which didn't mount the Windows drives properly and wouldn't let me even read them, much less share them. I didn't have any CDs at the time, and I wasn't prepared to waste another one on a copy of Linux that I was only going to use once and probably throw away next time they updated Ubuntu.

So I remembered a little application called Spin Rite that was supposed to fix all sorts of harddrive issues. So I decided to give it a little test run... To spare you the painful, pointless details, let's just say that after over 30 hours of running this program, it had constantly been trying to correct major, irrecoverable errors and was only 0.030% of the way through the drive. I gave up an canceled the thing, because I now, had a plan!

So yesterday, I went to Best Buy with a mission! To nab me one of these fabled 1GB USB drives with which I was going to make myself an Ubuntu Linux LiveCD... Only on USB. The way I see it... Why should I keep downloading Ubuntu and burning CD after CD, only to download a new version again, burn it, and throw away the obsolete version? Why do that when I could technically make the USB drive bootable and stick Linux on that, and update it when I get a new version downloaded? Anyway, I looked for some USB sticks, prepared to pay exactly 12 dollars for a 1GB drive, like I saw on NewEgg.com. Of course, I had to allow for taxes, but still. But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it... a Geek Squad brand 2GB USB drive for 19 dollars. Why, tell me, was the Geek Squad 1GB USB drive 25 dollars? And why was the 4GB USB drive 60 dollars? I'm not sure, but I pulled the thing off the shelf with the intent of making it quite clear that the price was labeled 19 dollars and I wanted it at that price. Luckily, it rang up 19 dollars and I didn't have to throw around my "customer-knows-best" privileges.

This thing was apparently made by SanDisk, so the Geek Squad logo is pure show. Pure annoying show, at that. Tell me, who in this universe actually likes the Geek Squad? I don't, and I actually considered not buying the thing because of it, but it was just too darn cheap to pass up. It had this funky new U3 technology, too, but I uninstalled it, because that wasn't why I wanted it, and I couldn't have it if I wanted to boot off of it.

After an intense day of downloading and reading and Linux command lines and partitioning, I finally got a persistent USB installation of Ubuntu. (Okay, a LiveCD is technically an installation of Linux that is static. Any changes you make are erased when you restart, because it's... well... running from a CD. Now, technically, you can also do that on a USB drive, but since a USB drive is writable, you can set it up to remember any changes you make! Which, unfortunately, was screwed up because the good ol' Ubuntu development team released the latest version with a critical bug that didn't let you do that. Luckily, someone had managed to manipulate the LiveCD so that it would once again remember changes you make... Hopefully, next release of Ubuntu will fix this incredibly serious error.)

The walkthrough I used was from this site. I'd used a bunch of other sites, but they were all variations on this, and when I actually followed the instructions for this walkthrough, everything worked flawlessly. Unfortunately, it requires an existing installation of Linux. Fortunately, this means it can also be a LiveCD. Unfortunately, if you're wanting to use a USB drive to omit the CD, you're still going to use one. Fortunately, I had the previous version of Ubuntu and I was able to use that with minimal work. If you're interested, check out that link. If, for some reason, 30 years from now, you visit this page and the link is down, ask me for it, because I saved it to my harddrive. If I no longer have it, chances are great that this method of installation is no longer used and nobody needs it anymore!

Seriously, it took me all day to get this working properly. Mostly because of all the images I downloaded and extracted and junk. It was a pain and gave me a headache, and my desktop's BIOS was acting incredibly stupid and threw me off several times when it didn't do what it was supposed to do, but I've got a working USB drive now.

After I got it working, I was able to mount the Windows drives properly, and actually share them! The result was that I was actually able to copy the Backup folder to a stable harddrive and everything copied flawlessly, as far as I know. No errors, and everything was readable. Hopefully, that means everything I've put on my computers for the last 7 years has been saved.

However, I still need a new harddrive... and I'm still waiting for the DVD burner to arrive, but, for now, the serious files have been recovered, and I'm happily running Windows again without any further issues. I think, for now, the drive's stable enough to use, but I need to stop using it for sensitive material.

I've also realized that I would immensely enjoy using Ubuntu as a desktop OS if only it would easily support 3D graphics acceleration, and my Audigy soundcard. It may now, I'm not sure, but it didn't used to... At least not easily. I also use my desktop for large, overnight downloads and Skype, because the Audigy is far better quality than my laptop. Although, if I invest in a good USB microphone, I may be able to use my laptop just as easily as I would on the desktop. Also, I use my desktop for piping movies through to my HDTV, and I wouldn't know where to begin that procedure in Ubuntu.

Hwahaha... I understand the need for backwards compatibility in application, but I also understand that there's a point to which providing compatibility starts becoming more of a pain than it's worth just to support people who are either too lazy to update, or see no need to. Computers aren't that expensive anymore (unless you're buying a Mac, ho!), so I don't think that's a good reason not to upgrade anymore. Unless you're going from decent system to top-of-the-line system. Going from ancient Windows 98 to decent Windows XP system isn't going to break your wallet. (Kinda like the people who still use 800x600 monitors and thusly expect websites to work for them.)

Anyway! I was updating Xfire and it pops up the annoying release notes when it's done. (Okay, so I read those!) First item on this list!

• The friend limit has been increased to 1000. Many people have asked for this. Does anyone really have that many friends?

I'm not joking. That's what it says. But they DO make a good point! I've seen some pretty hefty contact lists, but nothing near 1000... I guess enough people wanted it, for some reason, so they gave in to the excessiveness, but really... Does anyone REALLY have that many friends?

The rest are pretty normal stuff... Xfire now does this... That game now does that. Until the very end, where it gives you a link to visit to upgrade properly in Windows 98:

• Windows 98 users--you may need to follow these instructions to update properly. Maybe you'd like to upgrade to XP?

It seems that most companies would rather silently cater to people, no matter how ridiculously old their hardware and software is. Backwards compatibility for things that far back just causes extra work. Do yourselves a favor and upgrade to XP... Seriously, if you're using 98, you'll enjoy XP immensely! Just think about it! No more Blue Screens of Death. (Well, not because of Windows, that is. If you go poking around and start installing crappy drivers and stuff, sure, you might still get some.)

I just enjoy some of the... common sense that official text can have sometimes. "Fine, here's a list capable of 1000 friends, but do you REALLY have that many?" "You Windows 98 users are going to have trouble installing this update, so here's a link to help... But you know, Windows XP is a lot better by now."

So not only is a book labeled "REQUIRED" also labeled "currently not available online", but the books that I can get are going to cost over 500 dollars...

Thank you Ivy Tech, for consolidating all the books into a location nearly 2 hours away, and thank you, State of Indiana, for not giving me nearly enough money to pay for all this overpriced crap. You just barely gave me enough to cover tuition... A lot of help you provide when I can afford zero of these abominable prices.

No wonder Indiana is the dumbest state in the country. Prices are high because people get government aid anyway, but when the aid you get is still not quite enough, it doesn't matter, does it? Woohoo!

So, lately, I've been having a horrific time with my DSL modem. A scrawny Efficient Networks (Seimens) SpeedStream 5100 given to us by SBC. (Now AT&T, after that depressing merger.) Everyone I regularly interact with on the internet has been adversely affected... Skype would drop, Uru would crash, IMs would go offline and the modem would crash, pulling down half my network with it. It was pretty bad... It's been happening for several months, but has gradually been getting worse and worse... To the point of resetting every 10 minutes on the clearest days.

I at first thought the modem was broken, so I'd started to look for another. Let me tell you, that's no easy task... Everyone with a name worth looking at seems to promote cable modems and hide DSL modems in the darkest depths of their sites. Turns out, most of the modems were hidden under "router", as modem/router combinations that I really don't want, but apparently didn't have much of a choice.

With some help, I narrowed a really nice modem down to a Cisco 857. Depressingly expensive, but it's Cisco! Can't go wrong with mega-corporation quality equipment. If my modem was bad, this would solve all my problems. Found some on eBay that I'm tentatively watching, but I'm not going to pay 300 dollars for one, Cisco or not.

But then, with some more help from folks in Cyan Chat, I learned that line noise could cause a modem to crash. (Or at least appear to crash.) If it cycles through all the available DSL "channels" on the line, it'll reach the end and just... stop working. Which, after some diagnostics, I believe is exactly what was happening.

Today made it easy to track down the problem... It's a perfectly clear day, no a single rain cell on the weather map, and yet the modem was constantly dropping and reconnecting. Time to diagnose! (Warning, potentially complicated technical garble coming.)

So I'd read about DSL connectivity on DSLReports.com. Really interesting site! Didn't really help my issue directly, but I got some background knowledge. One thing that comes to mind is that I read about hybrid numbers. I believe it's basically a form of error correction implemented to counter bad house wiring. (If anyone with technical know-how reads this and laughs at my poor conclusions, please let me know so I can learn!) Basically, Hybrid 1 is what you want... It's where a modem has a direct line-of-sight (in a manner of speaking) to the telephone network. Nothing out of the ordinary, and it provides the best speeds. My modem had been connecting at Hybrid 2, which is common, but it's still not exactly good. Some reduced connectivity that can be avoided by proper wiring for at least your modem.

I'd been downloading a torrent last night, so there were plenty of errors and reconnections... All at Hybrid 2, and they were all reconnecting at speeds other than my maximum. 1536 is my max DSL speed, and the modem was connecting at 800, 600, 500... Anything but 1536. Bad, bad, bad. I was afraid that maybe our lines were deteriorating again like they were BEFORE we got DSL... Lines so noisy that you couldn't hear people talking.

So then I read some more DSLReports articles about how to open up the telephone junction box doothinger that they put on the outside of your house, so you can see if the line noise is house wiring or telephone network trouble. I'd hoped it was our fault, because then I could fix it! (In all honesty, I rewired our property's telephone wires when they came out to fix the static issues. I know where everything goes!)

Sure enough, I plugged a phone into the box and PERFECT dial tone with no noise, period. None at all. Quite refreshing to know it's possible to get that sound everywhere else. I'd picked up a phone inside the house and it was very, very noisy. I haven't actually used a telephone for ages, so I never noticed it before. Line noise was definitely the problem!

I had my own sort of little... hub of wires in the basement. That was my next stop. I had an idea that the problem was in the wires running out to Dad's work shop. An ancient track of wire put in by the house's previous owners, and thusly made a horrific job of it. Disconnected that, tested telephone, TADA! Perfectly noiseless... Connected DSL again, TADA! Perfect maximum speed without any crashes so far. Connected at Hybrid 1, even. An added bonus!
So that explains all the drops I've been having lately. Looks like I'm going to have to track down a spool of new line to drag out to the work shop and get Dad's phone working again. Maybe he can just connect his wireless phone base in the house and take the headset outside and we won't have to stretch a bazillion feet of cable out there.

BUT WE SHALL SEE... I'll have to put my modem under stress and see how it stands. By all accounts, it should be as pristine as when I first connected it. Hmm... Actually, the modem would seriously crash when you loaded a list of Counter-Strike: Source servers. Gathering information on over 6000 different connections in such a short time was a little too much for my connection. Let's test it!

Uhm... okay, as I type, it has passed the 6000 server margin and is at 11000 servers and still counting up. No signs of modem death, and the logs aren't even showing that it's tried to reconnect without my noticing! I think everything's going to be okay now, yay!

Cyan looks to be trying to recreate some of the D'ni guilds... I think the ones currently on the list are Writers, Cartographers, Messengers, Maintainers, and Greeters. (Greeters was an official guild? Didn't think it was...)

So the idea is really kinda neat, but what's upsetting is that there are a LOT of people who are jumping to "claim" each Guild as their own, with statements like they've done the most work, or they're most entitled because of [random reason], and everyone's trying to give their own opinion on how a certain guild should function. Now, of course, there are some people who probably SHOULD get the guilds, like Cartographers and Greeters. But there are no Writers, Maintainers or Messengers, yet. Still, I think, even though there are Cartographers and Greeters, they shouldn't be expecting to just magically become official and not change anything, and the other three should ESPECIALLY not expect to become official.

I kept asking people if Cyan was encouraging this (this meaning claiming a guild, professing to be the expert, etc), but never got a straight answer... Usually silence and just being ignored entirely. So then I was actually able to visit the new Kirel District in Uru, which is where the Guilds are "officially" based. The papers they have there describing each guild encourage the discussion of the guilds and how you think the guild structure should be.

Okay, so right now, it's just open to discussion. This isn't "campaign" time to plug your experience and wishes to rule over the Guild, this is just a time to talk and wonder what it would all be like. But people are taking that much, much farther and are going so far as to say "okay, this is the Guild of Writers" or "okay, this is the Guild of Maintainers", when it's not. Cyan hasn't even let us know what the Guilds' purposes are, yet. Most people, including me, think it might be the first steps to user-created content, but I wouldn't be surprised if that is NOT the case... But lots of people seem to already have their minds made up about how the Guilds should function, who is going to be in them, and what they're going to do. I mean, beyond the in-character papers stating that the Writers Guild writes Age, and the Maintainers Guild approves Ages... Sure, that's what the old D'ni Guilds did, but that might not be what Cyan/DRC has in mind.

I personally think Cyan didn't release enough information at once and left a lot of this open ended... It could be bad, but only because there are people taking what little information they have and are running a LONG way with it. I predict a lot of disappointed people in the future, and it will be their own fault.

On the other hand, I'm rather excited to see these Guilds popping up. I've always wondered what it would be like to be a Maintainer. Just think about it... I enjoy being important, but being important BEHIND the scenes. The Writers were probably the most highly esteemed Guild, the most respected and the most powerful. They did, afterall, create the D'ni Ages! But who linked to the Ages first? Who made sure it was safe? Who made sure it wasn't a death trap waiting to claim the lives of every citizen who linked to it? Thaaaat's right! The Maintainers! The guys behind the scenes making sure the Ages are safe, and remain safe, and have the power to approve or ban the use of Ages. Writing your own Age would be awesome, of course, but I don't think I want to do that. From an OOC perspective, to make an Age, you have to create models and pretty much build an interactive Quake map for people to explore. I've never been really good at map-making. I guess I could if I ever wanted to spend time learning, but I don't... At least not right now. And with all the chaos and politics surrounding the age-building tools right now, I don't want to be involved at all... At least not with any age-building project in action right now.

No, sir-ee... the Maintainers Guild is the Guild for me at the moment. And Edrick was all happy about it, saying that I would be a Maintainer and he would be a Writer, and I would be his sure-fire way to get his Age approved... Bwahaha. He has no idea...

However, I'm just going to sit back and watch things develop. I don't see the Guilds actually becoming useful for a while now, and the current state of affairs is pretty dismal. I may join a Guild in the future, but probably not until they're actually functioning and actually have a defined purpose.