Oh yeah. I have a Web site.

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

You ask me how I am
And all I can say is I still exist…
–lyrical snippet I wrote in 1997
Yep, I’m hacked off and moody, and when I get this way, it’s best if I say little more than yeah, I still exist. I know I won’t regret saying or writing that.

BBQ. I know I cut way back on my red meat intake–I may have managed to eat none at all in October, I’m not sure–but I have this fantasy of moving back to Kansas City, buying a house next door to Gates BBQ–no relation to that scumbag Billy Gates in Seattle–setting up an expense account, and eating BBQ three meals a day. BBQ for breakfast? Don’t dis it until you’ve tried it. But make sure it’s real BBQ. Here in St. Louis, restaurants tend to do Memphis-style BBQ, which is where you cook the meat without sauce until it’s good and dried out, then you splash some spicy sauce on it and call it BBQ. Kansas Citians know real BBQ is cooked long, slow, and in sauce. It adds a little flavor and keeps the meat from drying out as much.

Gates three times a day. Sounds like a great solution to any problem. Or at least a nice distraction.

Music. I’ve been listening to a CD my sister sent me by a band called claas-p.jambor. I know nothing about them, because their Web site xeptional.com is a Flash site and I’ve removed that blight from all my PCs, permanently. (Now if I can just get them to quit prompting me for the plugin…) Well, I do know this: Their music is awesome. Ever listen to a CD, then come to a song that makes you just stop the disc and put that song on repeat play for a couple of hours? “Open Skies” is one of those songs. I know I’m not the only one like that: when Beavis and Butthead saw a video they really liked, they said MTV should just play that video over and over. Beavis and Butthead wouldn’t like claas-p.jambor though. Too punky, and they’re Christian.

But three-chord Christian punk seems to be just what I’ve been looking for.

Blogging. Dan Bowman sent me a link to a site that looks promising. If you like it when I go off on my non-computer tangents, you’ll probably find him interesting. If you wonder what it’s like to be a Catholic priest, or a former Catholic priest, you’ll probably like it. He’s only been at it for a week or so. I like him. He shoots straight, makes me think, and holds just enough back to keep an aura about him. I think he’s more enigmatic than I am.

Effective e-mail communication. I guess I have to do a little computer stuff, huh? Here’s a snippet from a piece of e-mail I sent this morning, to someone who’s about to attend a seminar on effective communications:

“Dave’s rule #1: Make sure what you’re trying to communicate will actually be delivered. Therefore, you should avoid Outlook at all costs.”

To which he responded, Outlook is effective for sending mail bombs, viruses, Powerpoint presentations and Flash animations. I’m sure it transmits Anthrax just fine too. But I’ve had three, maybe even four people have Outlook just flat die in the past week. The answer is sometimes to run nfclean.exe and scanpst.exe. Sometimes I have to delete the user’s NT profile and import their PST. Sometimes I have to completely reinstall.

I hate Outlook. I hate Windows. And I can’t have another Amiga.

Give me Unix or give me death.

An end and a beginning….

Dave Farquhar General

The end. Arizona pulled it off, and little else needs to be said. The MVP going to the duo of Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson was not unprecedented: the 1981 co-MVPs were Ron Cey, Pedro Guerrero, and Steve Yeager. Two strong arms brought down the Yankee dynasty. It took both of ’em to win the Series, and both of ’em to win Game 7.
Interestingly enough, Cey, Guerrero and Yeager were members of the 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers. Their opponents were the New York Yankees.

The beginning. This was actually a fairly long process. Yesterday I proved that I can win an election in which I’m the only candidate. Our congregation elected three new officers yesterday, and I’m now a member of the Board of Directors.

I think the process got off the ground about a year ago. We had a banquet at church one Thursday night, a sort of thank-you for the church leadership. I’d just finished a stint on one committee and I was in the middle of a stint on another. We passed the mic around and shared testimonies. One of the girls sitting at the same table as me was looking kind of nervous about getting up and talking, so I slipped her a note. “This is everything I know about public speaking,” I said.

It read:
Remember why you’re here.
Be yourself.

She knocked ’em dead. She led off by reading the note.

The note made the rounds around the room. Near the end, I took the mic. Someone slipped me the note as I started talking.

I don’t really remember much about what I said. I told them about being told by three different churches, in one way or another, that they didn’t have much use for me, or that I should come back when I’d grown up. I found a church in Columbia that was different, but then I got a job in St. Louis and couldn’t take that church with me. Then I found this one. I said a lot of churches look for powerhouse, not promise. I thanked them for settling for promise.

And that night, I felt something change. I stepped over some line. I was a member of the club, the club my dad never cracked.

Now I’m a member of a slow-moving board that wields power and influence. Boards don’t have as much power as people give them credit for, and they rarely do anything quickly. My job? Look out for the needs of the members between the ages of 14 and 35. And do whatever I can to make that club a lot bigger and a lot easier to enter.

Yep, I guess I’m still young and idealistic. But maybe, just maybe, that’s appropriate now.

And this. I told you all about Emily last week. She was in church yesterday morning. Early service. Remarkable. She was leaving as I came in. She made it to a service I couldn’t motivate myself to get to. She had the right perspective. She said there was no place else she should be that morning, she was so blessed to be alive. I couldn’t disagree.

Civ3: First Impressions

Dave Farquhar General

Each game in the Civ series gets progressively better, but it also gets progressively harder to play because it gets more complicated. This makes it more fun, but potentially more frustrating for those who didn’t hop on the bandwagon in 1991 like I did.
Take the system requirements seriously. They state a P2-300, 64 MB RAM, 700 MB disk space free. I put it on a P2-233 with 64 MB. It runs but it gets bogged down. It liked my Duron-700 with 128 MB a lot better, but even that wasn’t silky smooth 100% of the time.

Graphically, Civ was respectable for its time. Civ2 had its moments but was never considered stunning. Civ3 impresses me a whole lot more. Civ3 won’t push your high-end video card (I ran it on an S3 Savage-based card and on an elderly laptop with NeoMagic 128-bit video and it did OK). It seems to be much more memory-, CPU-, and disk-intensive.

Unless you’ve been gearing up the past month or so by playing Civ or Civ2, I suggest starting off on one of the easier levels. It’s been a couple of years since I last played Civ2, but I found I was still able to be dominant on the easier levels. I found myself making some dumb mistakes as I tried to learn the new system (I kept my tech rate at 50% for several millennia, for instance, because I couldn’t figure out where to change it); you probably will too. I reached a point where I could have gunpowder and musketeers by 300 BC in the original Civ on the easier levels; you won’t find yourself doing that right away in Civ3.

The general strategy that applied to Civ all along still applies here. Expand as quickly as you can. If you find yourself near a weak neighbor that you can assimilate quickly, do so, but don’t enter a war you’re not absolutely positive you’ll win quickly. Sign a peace treaty and trade technology while you amass troops, then send them in in large waves. If you can manage to isolate yourself, either by taking a whole continent or fortifying your border, make a run for an advanced form of government, then crank up your economy. Then, once again, when wartime comes, make sure your troops are amassed and you have a good defense as well as a good offense. In Civ2 I could conquer a continent pretty quickly by moving in some high-power, fast-moving offense. That’s harder in Civ3. And entangling alliances can come back and bite you. I attacked an isolated city that was close to some natural resources I needed (oil I believe), intending to just take the city, hold it, and then do whatever it took to end the war quickly. Instead, I literally started a world war. I found my units weren’t strong enough or fast enough, and while my opponents quickly depleted their military, they had a good deal of success against my technologically superior army. I ended up losing a fair bit of land and a lot of infrastructure.

I’m glad to see these elements added to the game. It makes it a lot less simplistic.

My biggest beef: No multiplayer capability. I can’t believe anyone would release a strategy game in 2001 without any multiplayer ability. If you’re looking forward to a weekend Civfest with a couple of friends, skip this release. Wait for the multiplayer version, which should appear sometime next year. Otherwise, you’ll end up essentially buying the game twice.

Back to the old grind again.

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , ,

You are my addiction
My pleasure and my pain
You’re my infection
Disease, you burn my brain
–Pale Divine
That song was either talking about a girl or about cigarettes. I’m not sure which. But my addiction is something else. You’ll understand in a minute.

Conversation with Gatermann. “Something big came out this week,” I told him.

He took a few shots in the dark. Ridiculous things, like Windows XP.

“What are the necessities of life?” I asked.

“Women–“

“More important than women,” I said.

“More important than women!? What’s more important than the advancement of mankind?”

“You’re getting warm,” I said.

He stumbled around a really long time. He even said the settlement with Microsoft, which really got me going. Microsoft deserved to be run over by a steamroller. Very slowly. What they got wasn’t even a slap on the wrist. It was more like a warm caress. Excuse me while I gag. I dropped hints so he’d quit saying such repulsive things. It involves a computer but not an operating system. It’s not hardware, it’s software. Unfortunately, it only runs under Windows for the moment. Finally he started getting warm.

“Something to do with Railroad Tycoon?” he asked.

“Railroad Tycoon is indeed one of the necessities of life,” I pontificated. “You’re getting close.”

“More important than women and Railtycoon…”

“No, on par with Railtycoon,” I said. “And I’ll give you another hint. It’s not Baseball Mogul.”

He stumbled around some more.

“C’mon, Tom! What other games do I play?”

The answer is, of course, Civ3. I remember when I bought Civ2. The cashier was female, a year or two younger than me probably. “I love this game,” she said as she checked me out. Er, as she rang me up. I don’t know if she checked me out or not.

But because I’m a real dipstick, I didn’t propose to her on the spot. I didn’t even ask her out. Yeah I know. I coulda dated someone whose idea of a good time was a Civ bingefest.

Other stuff. If you ever put a parallel scanner on an NT4 workstation and run into all sorts of problems like bluescreens and service/driver failures at startup, check to make sure your parallel port and your sound card aren’t using the same interrupt. Better yet, get a real–I mean SCSI–scanner and use parallel ports for what they were designed. That’s printers, not Zip drives. If the interrupt’s free, the scanner will work, but you can forget about any other process getting any CPU time while you’re scanning.

I found a nice groupware app at www.phprojekt.com. It requires PHP, Apache, and MySQL. Not quite an Exchange killer but the price is sure right. And Exchange sure hurt Notes, because it’s cheaper, even though Notes is completely in another league.

And if someone complains about banner ads on your corporate intranet, check and see if Gator is installed. Then slap the hand of the dolt who installed it. (Probably the same dolt who went and bought a parallel scanner at CompUSA for 25 bucks and came in and told you to make it work.)

Recovery, Day 5.

Dave Farquhar Human Interest

I didn’t go see Emily on Wednesday night. Instead I went to see From Hell with my friends Jeanne and Tom. The theory it presented was interesting, but anyone who knows anything about Jack the Ripper knows it played awfully fast and loose with the facts. I can’t say much more without spoiling it. I’d have gone to see it just because of my fascination with Film Noir, but From Hell seemed to me like an excuse to show a bunch of closeups of Johnny Depp and shots of Heather Graham dressed up like people imagine turn-of-the-century prostitutes looking. In other words, too much oogle and not enough plot. I think the directors realized this wasn’t enough, so they added a sex scene and a few female-female French kisses. And of course lots of blood. I’d have preferred a less-predictable storyline and a little more intrigue.
Sleepy Hollow played way fast and loose with the story it was based on, but somehow it seemed more compelling to me.

But I didn’t come here to be Gene Siskel.

Last night, Emily was out of ICU. She looked really good. Her color was back, she’d had a chance to wash the blood out of her hair, and a lot of the cuts on her face had healed. To me, it looked very possible that she’d escape this without any noticeable scars on her face. The tubes and wires were gone, and she was sitting up on her own, moving around, and talking. Man, was she talking. She’s been eating solid foods. Someone slipped her some Taco Bell after lunch Thursday, and she had McDonald’s on Wednesday. Apparently they’re having a festival in Millstadt this weekend and she’s a bit bummed she won’t be able to go to it. “Chili and snoots. That really sounds good. Especially snoots. That’s my favorite.”

She turned to me. “You like snoots?” she asked.

“I’m gonna feel real stupid for saying this, but I don’t know what snoots are,” I said.

“Pig snouts,” she said.

I think she enjoyed the look on my face. “They’re good,” she said unconvincingly. “You ought to try some.”

I think I’d rather take up vegetarianism again.

Then her uncle and Norm, one of my congregation-mates, started talking about other–ahem–delicacies. They asked Emily what she thought of pig’s feet, liver, tongue, brain, blood sausage, and head cheese. She turned her nose up at most of them. When she didn’t turn her nose up, she gave commentary instead: That’s just gross.

Then they started talking about their experiences with Rocky Mountain Oysters. “I’ll bet he doesn’t know what those are either,” one of them said, nodding in my direction.

Emily turned and looked straight at me. “Bull balls,” she said nonchalantly. I shuddered and made a face. She seemed to enjoy that.

What can I say? I’ve lived a sheltered life.

I’m mostly glad to have seen her looking and acting like her old self. That’s worth a lot of laughs and gross-outs at my expense.

She gets to go home today.

Recovery, Day 3.

Dave Farquhar Human Interest

I saw Emily again last night. My heart sank a little when they said at the front desk she was still in ICU, but Emily was a lot better yesterday. She was much more alert, and I saw her give a couple of people dirty looks, including me. She talked about the people who came to see her. She remembered me coming to see her, but she thought it was during the day rather than Monday night. Narcotics do that, and she’s still on strong stuff. I’m surprised how much she remembers from yesterday, but I doubt she’ll remember a whole lot a week from now. I know when I’ve messed myself up seriously, codeine seriously killed the flashbulb effect, and she’s on stronger stuff than codeine.
She was still in ICU, but it had nothing to do with her. They had a busy evening in the ER, so they didn’t have adequate available staff to move her. I heard some rumblings she may get to go home Thursday.

Hmm. There’s more to say but it’s late and I’m tired after having just spent all night on the phone. But I think I can sum most of it up in this. On Monday, I saw someone who was vulnerable. On Tuesday, I saw a fighter.

Recovery.

Dave Farquhar Human Interest ,

I went and saw Emily last night. She was beat up, but not as badly as you’d expect someone who’d been thrown from a car to be. She was still in ICU because they’re worried about her spleen. She was in pretty good spirits considering everything she’d been through in the past 36 hours.
I mentioned to one of my coworkers that I was going to the hospital after work to see a friend in ICU. She said those kinds of visits were hard. I guess they are, but I’ll take an ICU visit over a funeral visitation any day. Maybe it’s hard to know what to say, but I guess I’ve found it doesn’t matter too much. Look at Job. Job lost everything, then was struck with leprosy, so then he went out to the town dump and sat there. His three friends went out there to be with him and spent a week there with him, without a word. Then when they finally did speak, they said, “You idiot!”

During those times, I think it’s good to remember the words of Mark Twain. If God had wanted us to talk more than we listen, he’d have given us one ear and two mouths.

I looked into her eyes and saw someone who’s fighting, but she’s tired, frustrated, and impatient. What I didn’t see was someone at the end of her rope. I could tell she looked into my eyes and saw someone who cared. I didn’t really have to say much else.

When bad things happen to good people…

Dave Farquhar Christianity , ,

When bad things happen to good people. A couple of weeks ago, I got e-mail from a friend I’ll just call by her nickname, Hammer. Hammer moved to upstate New York this summer, after having lived in a small Illinois town outside of St. Louis her whole life. Hammer e-mails her friends a lot, and she’s probably the wordiest and most vocal person I know, myself included. Hammer told me (and others) about a longime friend who’d been going to our church for the past six months, who wanted to join our small group, but didn’t know any of us.
Her story was that of a fairly typical twentysomething Lutheran growing up in the 90s: Didn’t catch every break, made some good decisions and some bad decisions. She was successful, especially considering her age, but maybe a bit lonely. She didn’t have very many Christian friends.

I took it hard. Hammer described this girl, and I was about 99.8% certain I knew who she was talking about. Six months and no one close to her age had talked to her? That’s just wrong. So that night, after Wednesday service, I walked up to her. I didn’t care how uncomfortable it felt. I held out my hand and hoped I wouldn’t sound like a bumbling idiot.

“I’ve seen you around but I’ve never met you,” I said. “I’m Dave.”

She smiled. “I’m Emily,” she said.

My hunch had been right.

I had no idea how to invite her to Bible study, but that was fine. Hammer’s mom was right there. “Emily’s interested in your Bible study,” she said. I waved over to some of my cohorts, who came over. We made some quick introductions. My friend Brenna offered to meet Emily at church and drive with her to our next session, since it was in a part of town she wasn’t familiar with.

The next Friday, she was there. She fit right in. Like I said, her story–at least what I know of it–is virtually interchangeable with mine and with most Christians my age.

I flagged her down the following Sunday. She thanked me for inviting her, and said she’d been a bit nervous at first. She didn’t know what to expect–would she find a Lutheran monestary, or would she find people like her?

“You found people like you, right?” I asked.

She smiled. “I think so.”

“Good,” I said.

I saw her again Wednesday. She mentioned her back had been bothering her that day, and she asked if we were meeting Friday. I said yes. I asked for her e-mail address so I could e-mail her directions.

“Good,” she said. “What’s your phone number?”

I know I gave her a shocked look. She chuckled. “In case I have any questions about the directions,” she said.

I smiled and gave up the digits.

On Friday, my phone rang. No, it wasn’t the Charter cable guy I talked about yesterday. That was later. It was Emily. She told me she’d spent the day on the couch, her back had been acting up, and she wouldn’t be able to make it.

I told her we’d make sure we said a prayer for her.

“I was just about to ask if you would do that for me,” she said. I didn’t get the impression she was used to people volunteering to pray for her. Then I asked if she’d gone to see her doctor. No, she said, because a doctor would just give her pain pills, but she’d been to see a chiropractor. Good answer. She said he took x-rays, and he didn’t do anything else but shock her. She said that helped for a little while but she didn’t know what that was for.

“That’s to stimulate the nerves,” I said. “Once he gets the x-rays, he’ll probably pop you with this springy thing to move some bones back in place.” Those are technical terms, by the way. Well, the only technical terms my simple mind can understand.

“So you’ve been to a chiropractor before?” she asked.

“Oh yeah,” I said. I described the procedures a little more. It’s uncomfortable sometimes but helps. Hopefully I put her mind at ease a little.

“Would you do me another favor?” she asked timidly at the end of the conversation. I thought she was going to ask me to build an addition to her house or something.

“Sure,” I said. (What can I say? I’m a sucker.)

“Would you say a prayer for my brother too? He’s moving, and left today, and I just want him to be safe.”

“Absolutely,” I said. “We’ll do that for you.”

I’ve heard thank-yous that sincere before, but they’re rare.

I prayed for both of them that night. I prayed for her and for her brother right when I hung up the phone, then later during the Bible study. That night, before I went to bed, I prayed again. I asked for her to be up and around on Saturday.

Sunday morning, I heard the answer to that prayer. We got to the point in the service when we pray, and one of our Seminary students led the prayers. He included Emily. “That’s nice,” I thought. Then I heard the rest–“Emily, who was in a car accident early this morning.”

Details were sketchy. My phone rang later yesterday afternoon with more details. She’d seen her chiropractor Saturday and had been feeling much better, so she went out. “Early” meant much closer to midnight than 8. She rolled her car and spent some time in ICU.

But she was alive. That was the important thing.

The answers did nothing but raise more questions. Why this? Why now? What did I accomplish by praying for her?

I don’t have any answers. At least not any good ones.

Obviously, the evil one sees her as a threat. Seeing as he’s seen 12 billion different people and has a long memory, something in her rang a little too familiar, he saw an opportunity to take her out, and he tried.

God could have prevented it by keeping her on the couch one more day. I don’t know why He didn’t. He didn’t have to say yes to our requests as quickly as He did.

I could spend all day second-guessing Him like I second-guess Joe Torre and Bob Brenly. It wouldn’t accomplish anything productive. It’s better to look to Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 8, verse 28 instead. It reads: “In all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”

Including car crashes.

What good can come from this? She’s about to find out what she’s made of. She’s likely to reach deep down and find something she never knew she had.

Why do bad things happen to good people? For the same reason bad things happen to bad people–bad things happen to everyone. They usually seem to make bad people worse, and good people better.

Telephones and World Series

Dave Farquhar Baseball , , , , , ,

Cable guy. My phone rang Friday night.
“Hi, this is [I didn’t catch the name] from Charter, the cable company. How are you doing tonight?”

I knew I should have forked over the extra bucks for privacy guard. “I’d be a whole lot better if you’d take me off your calling list,” I said.

“You don’t even want to hear about our special offers?” he asked.

“Nope. I don’t watch TV,” I said.

He sounded disbelieving. “You don’t watch TV?”

“Nope.”

“You mean to tell me you haven’t watched one second of TV today?”

“Right.” I hadn’t. Actually I hadn’t watched one second of TV since I fell asleep during the playoffs and was rudely awakened by Frank Sinatra singing “New York” at high volume after the Yankees steamrolled the Mariners. Disgusted, I turned off the boob tube (that’s all it shows during the commercials) and went to bed.

“What are you doing now?” he asked.

“Getting ready to go out.”

“Oh, you’re going to a party or something?”

Close enough. “Yep.”

“Oh. Sorry to bother you, sir.” And he hung up.

This is the one time of year I do watch TV. That’s World Series time. Unless it’s Yankees-Braves, in which case I have more important things to do, like clean my toenails. My phone rang last night right after Curt Schilling plunked Derek Jeter. “That’s my phone,” I muttered to no one. “Don’t they know better than to bother me during the World Series?” No one answered. I picked up the phone. “Hello?”

Whoever it was must have wised up. There was no one there. Good thing. If it’d been the cable guy again, I’d have had to tell him it’s not worth $35 a month just to be able to watch seven baseball games with a clearer picture.

A few random World Series observations:

Yeah, I know Curt Schilling beat the Cards, and I wanted a Cardinals-Mariners series. Even still, he’s one cool guy. He doesn’t care who sees him praying just before each start, and he bought a ticket for his dad, who died in 1988 and never saw him pitch in the big leagues, for this game. Having lost my dad at a similar age, I empathize. And he’s just a class act. At the end of the game, as his teammates were coming off the field, he ran out to give them handshakes and hugs. Starting pitchers almost never do that. I have to root for him. Baseball needs more good men like Curt Schilling.

Baseball also desperately needs another commissioner like Bart Giamati. Is it just me, or is baseball commissioner Bud Selig the worst public speaker in the history of public speaking? It really bothered me that he had to refer to a script to present Barry Bonds with his worthless Commissioner’s Historic Achievement Award or whatever it’s called. Selig’s speech could be summed up as, “Barry, you had a fantastic season, taking a record that once belonged to Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, and Mark McGwire, joining the ranks of three of the greatest sluggers of all time, while also having one of the greatest all-around offensive seasons of all time. It’s my pleasure to present you with this award, previously awarded to McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. Congratulations.” But it took him what seemed like several torturous hours to say that. What I just wrote isn’t particularly eloquent, but compared to Selig’s speech, it’s practically Shakespearean.

At any rate, I was happy to see Arizona win. I can’t root for the Yankees. Used to be the only team I disliked more than the Yankees was the Mets. But if the Mets were playing the Yankees, I’d have to root for the Mets just because they aren’t the Yankees. Yeah, I know, that sounds un-American this year. But two people I respect–one of whom I respect so much, his picture hangs in a frame in my living room, across from a picture of Abraham Lincoln–feel exactly the same way.

So here’s to Arizona. And to the American League, who next season will hopefully put the Yankees in their proper place.

Fifth.

Linux and PC cubes

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , , ,

PC cubes! Yes, I want a cube-shaped computer, because it’s small. No, I don’t want one made by Apple, or an obsolete NeXT (I used those in college when I couldn’t get time on an SGI). I want something small and cheap, and if it’s reasonably good looking, that’s a bonus.
Enter the Shuttle SV24.

Unlike Apple’s cube, it has a brushed-alumninum case, so it won’t crack. Just like Apple’s cube, it generates extreme reactions, and not everyone who likes Apple’s cube likes Shuttle’s.

I admit, it doesn’t have Apple’s styling. But I like Lian-Li’s styling a lot better. I wouldn’t put this in Lian-Li’s league either. But it’s certainly no uglier than any of the PCs I own now, and it’s small and light. So yeah, it has me thinking.

Where can you get one? Two of my favorite vendors have it, at a price of $250: Newegg.com and Mwave.com.

I also saw on Ars’ forums that MSI makes a slimline PC called the 6215. Newegg has it (search for “6215”) for $210. It’s tiny, but has two PCI slots and is more conventional-looking. I’m thinking the 6215 would be great for a server appliance, seeing as it has two PCI slots so you could put a SCSI card in it. You could also disable the onboard Realtek NIC and replace it with a card like an Intel EtherExpress Pro that uses less CPU time.

More Linux. The biggest thing holding me back from migrating to SupaSite is its requirement of the Apache, MySQL and PHP trio. I’ve tried to get those three to work together before, and the setup wasn’t exactly trivial, especially when trying to do it from RPMs. It looks like it’d be a whole lot easier to just compile it yourself. But this past week I found Apache Toolbox, which downloads the source for those three, plus bunches of Apache modules and compiles them for you. It sounds like it even helps out with configuration. I’ve gotta give this one a shot.