It's quiet... (another nerdy post)
It’s quiet… (another nerdy post)
In many ways. Last night, I turned off my usual “casual browsing and chatting” machine. It’s probably no surprise to anyone that my little corner of computer entertainments has several computers in it. I have a laptop, provided by my employer, which has an external monitor so I can look at Outlook while at the same time running remote desktop to other computer servers. At my left is a big-ass CRT which has two VGA inputs. Usually one of those inputs is taken by a Macintosh Xserv, which is designed to be mounted in a rack in a computer room. Kinda takes the “MacOSX is a Unix operating system” idea to an extreme. The box does not come from the factory with a video adaptor, you should be able to administer it completely from the command line, and I LOVE command lines, I’m a bit of a dinosaur that way. This machine, while pretty powerful (dual G4, not quite 2 gigs of RAM) is also VERY noisy. It’s got circuitry that detects the operating temperatures, causing the fans to run slower if it is cool, and faster (and louder) if it is hot. My house is not air conditioned, so lately it has been HOT. And NOISY. I suspect that OSHA would have some things to say about ear protection because of its presence in my work environment. So this morning, I declined to turn it back on. I still have my laptop (which is pretty quiet) and I have an older machine which I am running KNOPPIX from. KNOPPIX is a version of Linux that can run directly from a CD-ROM. It normally does not interact with the local hard drives, so in fact it can run completely without a hard drive - CPU+RAM+CD-ROM=functional system including a graphical desktop, and various other server functions like MySQL, Apache, PostGreSQL, etc. Personal data can be saved to a flash drive as needed. So right now, the loudest thing in my immediate environment is an oscillating fan a couple feet to my left, providing much-appreciated moving air. Oh, and it seems that the universe has more cute cat lessons for me. My mom sent the following link to me in email. DISCLAIMER: I do not know this cat, nor its owner. http://blogoscoped.com/files/stripes.html