No rest for Orac

Poor old Orac. No, not the cranky computer from Blake’s 7, but the cranky computer on which I used to build this site. Orac was a homemade Frankenstein monster with some issues. He’d freeze up inexplicably in the midst of routine operations that were anything but taxing to his processor. Sometimes the freeze would end in a matter of seconds, and sometimes it would end in a three-fingered salute. I depended on it both at home and to do stuff for work, and it was a singularly frustrating experience having so much of my life in the virtual hands of such a persnickety computer. When I got the new Dell machine this summer, I gratefully retired Orac. As cranky as he was, he served me well.
About a week later, Orac was back in service.
Not frequently, mind you, and it’s not as if I drop-kicked the new machine out the window, but I found that there were some things it simply wouldn’t do. For one thing, my scanner – still perfectly serviceable, and still a relic of the pre-USB era with its parallel-port interface – had a driver disk that the new PC just wouldn’t let me load. “Blech!” it would say. “I won’t load that driver! My operating system is too modern!”
So Orac was back on the air – with a scanner and nothing more attached to it.
Then a few weeks ago, I discovered that my new PC also wouldn’t properly run an emulator called Stella. Stella is a DOS-based Atari 2600 emulator which, short of the real hardware and a stack of real cartridges, remains my favorite way to play those games. So out of the storage box in my closet came my equally cranky old VGA-to-NTSC scan converter, which I promptly plugged into Orac. Now Orac can output video of any 2600 games I don’t actually own so I can create the flash movies that will eventually grace nearly every game review page on this site. It seems Orac’s work will never be done. In hindsight, perhaps I should’ve given that computer another name from Blake’s 7 lore – the much-put upon Slave from the fourth series.
For the second week running, my wife has – without even really trying – brought home morsels of Finn Brothers goodness that my ears have not heard. A week or so ago, she was perusing her favorite Christian book/music store and was trying to stuff one more CD into her shopping bag to meet the minimum for a “buy X, get 1 free” deal, and grabbed a Sixpence None The Richer CD for me, at a loss for what else to get. That’s okay – I like Sixpence. And little did she or I know, that CD had the group’s cover of Don’t Dream It’s Over on it, and a decent cover at that. Tonight she found the limited edition CD/DVD pack of Harry Gregson-Williams’ score from The Chronicles Of Narnia at a deep discount and picked that up, figuring that it could be review fodder. Lo and behold, in addition to the score there are a few songs from the movie on there, among them a brand new Tim Finn tune. I think I’m just going to send her off to search for rare Finn CD singles next, because she’s having better luck at adding to my Finn collection than I am.
ice scream
It’s funny – yesterday, despite being stuck at home and unable to get to work, I sent some of these photos of my iced-over street (in full-size form, though) to our chief meteorologist, along with a note that nothing had been done to even attempt to clear that street. He pretty much read the note word-for-word on the air while showing this picture. Amazingly, my street was gritted first thing this morning. Coincidence?
In Arkansas football news, Coach Gus Malzahn has been lured away from a stellar career as head coach at multiple-state-championship-winning Springdale High School, and is going to be the first offensive coach the Razorbacks have had since head coach Houston Nutt arrived. It doesn’t take a pro sports analyst to see how this will play out: within 5 years, I’ll bet that Frank Broyles will retire as the school’s athletic director, Houston Nutt will “retire” from coaching to take Broyles’ place, and then Malzahn will slide comfortably into the head coaching slot. One thing’s for sure, if Malzahn can get the Hogs fired up like he’s done with numerous teams at Springdale, Arkansas could be a force to be reckoned with again. Only time will tell. For now, I think this was a very good move.

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