Requiem for a box
The day has come when Computing Services will wait no longer. They must have my backup PC now, they say. They are clearing all the old, obsolete crap out of their inventory. I resent this characterization, as this was a cutting-edge machine just... well it's been almost 6 years now, but it seems recent enough.
It's a mighty Pentium II clocking at 350 mHz. It's running Windows 95. Yes, 95. I've been running a webserver on it with scarcely a hitch (barring power outages and such) for a good 5 years now. My new boxes are ten times faster and run the latest OS, and they tend to choke and crash and miscommunicate with other components of the computing environment, such as the network. They like to hog files all to themselves, and if another box tries to touch an open file, the spiffy new box will usually maul and mutilate the poor file. Not my little P-350. It's too dumb to worry about access conflicts. It's also too dumb to get hacked. It just doesn't do enough for a hacker to exploit.
So I downloaded everything I wanted to keep from the old box. A lot of files from 1998, even as far back as '97. I'll get a way better box in its place, but who cares? This is a pain in the ass, and it forces me to confront the passage of time. Here's 6 years, right in your face. Shit. Can't we talk about something else?
It's a mighty Pentium II clocking at 350 mHz. It's running Windows 95. Yes, 95. I've been running a webserver on it with scarcely a hitch (barring power outages and such) for a good 5 years now. My new boxes are ten times faster and run the latest OS, and they tend to choke and crash and miscommunicate with other components of the computing environment, such as the network. They like to hog files all to themselves, and if another box tries to touch an open file, the spiffy new box will usually maul and mutilate the poor file. Not my little P-350. It's too dumb to worry about access conflicts. It's also too dumb to get hacked. It just doesn't do enough for a hacker to exploit.
So I downloaded everything I wanted to keep from the old box. A lot of files from 1998, even as far back as '97. I'll get a way better box in its place, but who cares? This is a pain in the ass, and it forces me to confront the passage of time. Here's 6 years, right in your face. Shit. Can't we talk about something else?