i think it's specifically a UK network problem, but it branches off into MicroSloth and everything else...
when i lived in boyd with the Executor, networking life was easy... full ethernet connection, always up, running linux, and so i had my own ftpserver, webserver, nameserver, mail server, i received mail on my hard drive, i could log in from anywhere on campus and do homework, write papers, play games, on my system; even better, i had a super-fast connection that made downloading easy and web-surfing even easier.
then i moved out of the dorm, much to the benefit of my personal and social life... but infinitely much to the detriment of my 'puter.
over here on waller avenue, just a block away from the all-powerful network of UK, itself a node on the world wide internet, i am helplessly isolated! with nothing more than a single phone line, a 28.8 modem, and a useless ethernet adapter... and problems, problems, problems...
i un-installed all the networking stuff from windows NT before unplugging the Executor on move-out day, knowing that if the system tried to find the non-existent network i could never get it booted. that one worked. then i tried to re-install networking, this time using the U.S. Robotics Sportster 28.8 modem as the networking device... but Bill Gates merely cackled at me, and chucked, "sure, go ahead -- OOPS!!! you're screwed!!!!!!!!!!" as the blue screen of death popped up upon every subsequent reboot...
i screamed quite a few obscenities, and very loudly, i might add...
after the sencond re-install of NT (total to date: 10... "uncrashable" my ass!), i decided to bite the bullet and install MicroSloth Winsuck '95... after all, NT barely supports my printer and sound card, and niether with the correct features, and LucasArts' X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter will run only under win95.
oh, yeah, this is when i found out that the all-mighty win-95 doesn't know about my motherboard and disabled my bios' cdrom controller... c'est la vie!
so after much pain there, i finally have WinSuck 95 up and running, and all my applications and peripherals work wonderfully -- except that the PPro200 is meant more for NT than 95 so the damned operating system performs horribly... --- and STILL i can't connect to UK with my modem!!!!!! they wouldn't let me on under NT because of error-checking -- and win95 doesn't have SLIP!
AAAAAAUUUGH!!!!!@#$%^&*(*&^%$#$%^&*(I*&^%
so then i tried under linux... after a complete re-partitioning and all that, i typed
tar -zcvf /muppethome/users/scott.tar.gzinstead of
tar -zxvf /muppethome/users/scott.tar.gzonly ONE character's difference, but instead of unzipping and extracting ("x") all of my user files, it created ("c") a new, empty archive with the same name, in the same place... effectively pissing into the wind over 150 MEGABYTES of information and configuration files that i'd collected over the LAST SIX MONTHS.
after re-installing, again, i'm bak to square one. using dip and SLIP in linux, i can connect to UK's slip-line at 14.4 (no, not 28.8) and tie up my phone line while merely typing in pico on the sac.uky.edu suffers from noticable net-lags...
grrrrrr....
by the way, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter uses my modem with absolutely no problems (well, excepting call-waiting), and lets me know just how terrible a pilot i really am.
5-ish pm june 7