Monday, March 12, 2007

Windows Home Server Beta 2 Diary, pt 2

Saturday, March 3
The day after the lights went out in CompUSA (during my abortive attempt to buy a suitable hard drive), I was at it again. I'd located my Best Buy gift card, so I headed out there after my morning workout. To my dismay, the selection of IDE drives was not worth talking about. I think it was kind of nonexistent, but we're talking about something that happened nine days ago, so my memory is definitely non-existent. I wandered into the phone section to see the offerings, so that my trip wouldn't be a total loss. The guy in that section asked me if I was finding everything alright; I knew he wasn't asking about what I was truly looking for, but I told him nonetheless. Of course, he pleasantly suggested I talk to one of the associates in the computer section or the Geek Squad. Me? Talk to a member of the Geek Squad? I got out of there in a hurry. My apologies to G-Squadders everywhere, but I remember Best Buy's computer repair department's reputation in the 90's, and I personally knew someone who'd had bad experiences (that is more than one!), so...I just can't.

I was prepared to head out to Circuit City when I noticed the Office Max sign and thought, "what the heck?" Twenty feet from the door, I saw signs to make my little geek heart soar. There, right in front of me, was ONE 80gb hard drive for a mere $40! And then, the pain started--right next to this treasure were several 200gb hard drives for a mere $70! I stared, my eyes going first to the left, then to the right...footsteps approached...My spindly little arm shot past the couple coming dangerously close. My fingers seized the prize, and faster than you could say "CPU," I had the lower-priced, smaller-capacity item clutched close to my body. I might have given the nearby people cause to give me a strange glance; I'm not saying either way. Mission mostly accomplished, I decided to do a little extra shopping before leaving with the 200gb drive--yeah, this is me you're talking about, so naturally I couldn't leave the store with the smaller drive. I went home and went to sleep.

After waking up, I decided it was time to download the Home Server ISO and burn it. Unfortunately, the Microsoft site didn't decide to give it to me. Yep, that's right. The darned site was down, or partially down, or something. It was all my fault, because I could of course have only one success that day. I put the hard drive in the PC and went back to sleep. Ok, well that's not entirely true. I decided to install FreeBSD on the PC while I waited for the ISO to become available. Never got the stinking thing to install right, and I don't usually have that kind of trouble with BSD (not that I'm any UNIX guru or anything). After that additional failure, I really did go back to sleep.

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