Reading (For Dummies)

Geeking out

Went over to James' all day yesterday, attempting to set up an IPSec gateway.

I was uncharacteristically bad in both an inability to form coherent sentences most of the day (I'll blame that on sleep the night before) but also computer-stuff. Not having my own reasonably fast x86 box running linux has been a real detriment to my *nix knowledge. Even when I had a box, though, I would rarely install software or set up services that required reboots (for example, IPSec requires kernel patches, a few LKMs, and some serious breaking of networking to get it working). That was all because my one good x86 box was my webserver. Fortunately things have gotten better in the server department.

So my eyes are turning toward building myself a decent, reasonably priced desktop machine to keep my knowledge levels up. I guess upcoming computer shows can help me there. Of course, if any friends have some slightly-dated-but-still-fast x86 hardware they want to sell, I'm game (anything faster than, say, 1.2GHz, preferably motherboards with an AGP slot).