Of Course, You Understand That This Means War
My apartment is not as clean as it could be (or has been). This has been bothering me more and more, so today — the first day of a three day weekend — I decided to fix things up a bit. This means cleaning. Not "clean your room before you go out to play" sort of cleaning either.
If I was the ruler of a small country, this would be a national program, requiring federal funding, periodic reports to parliament, motivational posters.. .the whole nine yards. It would have an imposing name like Operation No Dust Bunny Left Behind. This is war on mess and dust. Like spring cleaning, except at the start of winter (it may take until spring to finish).
Today was a case of two steps forward, one step back. Started on the office. Periodically, I permute the piles of junk in my office, dust around them and wave the vacuum cleaner at the exposed parts of the floor. Today, I moved everything out and off the tables. Vacuumed viciously and stared in horror at the still dirty carpet might need to get a man with high-powered carpet cleaning devices in at the end of this. Washed the desk down, moved things around so I have more room (brought in another table as well). Plugged everything back in, turned on the computer and ...
Aargh! It was making grinding/clicking noises. Repeatedly. And not so many blinkenlights as I might have hoped for. Pulled it apart. Dusted inside (Operation NDBLB knows no borders in its search for the enemy). Checked all the cables were plugged in firmly. Reconnected everything. No dice. :-(
It seems that plugging USB devices in was causing a short or something. Eventually got the machine started. Can happily plug in USB devices (important things like keyboard and mouse) now, but I'm a bit afraid if I need to reboot, which happens about once every few months, except there's probably a Fedora 7 kernel upgrade coming out in the next couple of weeks and I'll need to do it then.
I'm also at a fragile point in my setup where my backup machine has failed (fatally) and I still need to set up the replacement system, so I really don't need a main machine meltdown just now. Boy, am I going to be working on fixing that window of opportunity for disaster tomorrow! NSLU2 unit and new hard-drive waiting to be configured as we speak.
So more of this evening than I intended was spent working out how to restart the desktop machine and portions of the office still look like a mess. Operation NDBLB has made camp for the night and will need to resume the attack tomorrow. What started out in a fit of enthusiasm, rapidly regressed into swearing, self-recrimination ("how could be so stupid as to think you could clean house without punishment from the gods?") and mild panic/annoyance. The adrenalin rush has worn off now and things seem back to normal, but nobody is allowed to think less than happy thoughts, okay? My world might be holding together with string and sticky-tape. I'm just not sure, any longer.