Mr. Disproportionate Response

Dear Iran,

To the people of Iran, thank you for your brave show of strength, of freedom, and of self respect. The courage you’ve shown in the last weeks brings a tear to my eye and hope to my heart. To the illegitimate ruling class of Iran, I offer a song, for your consideration.

Love,

Mr. Disproportionate Response

Iranian security forces are hunting for bloggers using location/timezone searches.

10 Go to www.10minutemail.com
20 Set up a throw-away e-mail account.
30 Use this account to create a new Twitter account.
40 Set your location to Tehran & your time zone to GMT +3.30.
50 GOTO 10

Please keep spreading the word on the dummy accounts. Yes, Twitter will take a hit, but Twitter isn’t getting shot at over this. Spread the word, and if you can find someone who can write a script that’ll do this automagically, let’s pull them in and get their help. Let’s drown those Basij bastards in data. The more people at this location, the more of a logjam it creates for forces trying to shut down Iranians’ access to the internet. Cut & paste & pass it on.

Go watch Repo! The Genetic Opera. Do it, or I’m coming to your house and waiting in your bathroom with a rusty fork.

Sunday, 6 June, 2009
Turned on World of Warcraft. Attended guild meeting. Toward the end of the guild meeting, there was a crunching sound inside Infinity’s case. I started wrapping things up as fast I could, so I could shut down without data loss, but I took much too long. The crunching turned into a grinding, then a high-pitched whining, then a heart-lurching, “POP POP POP!” as the main drive ate itself. It would power on, but not boot. After some work in the Windows Recovery Screen, I managed to get it loaded, but the GPU was sluggish and couldn’t handle basic tasks. The hard drive now sounded like it was gargling gravel, and took several seconds to respond to any command. As a regular benchmark of my system’s performance, I tried something I’m familiar with: I loaded World of Warcraft.

The good news: It loaded. The bad news: It took 23 minutes.

After troubleshooting and chatting with Seagate, they agreed with me: The hard drive was a brick. One of my SATA ports on the motherboard was shot. This will make the seventh patch-up repair to keep Infinity working. Infinity, now on its 7th year of its 5-year mission, was due for retirement. With regret, I pushed the power button off for what might be the last time.

Saturday, 13 June, 2009
I’ve been living by my laptops for a while. It was time to get back to some REAL computing. With the help of my housemates, we made for Renton, Washington, and paid a visit to Fry’s Electronics. Mr. Disproportionate Response would live up to his name. His up-until-recently-sturdy computer had survived 7 years, not on the cutting edge, but at least on the front side of the blade. Its failure was a blow to his ego. Mr. Disproportionate Response needed a response to remind computers around him that failure was NOT an option. And so, he began the assembly of a desktop computer that would DWARF his previously impressive system.

Using his very limited budget, he acquired a Coolermaster HAF 932 case, 6GB Patriot DDR3 RAM, and Gigabite GA-MA790FXT-UD5P Motherboard. The case is incredibly amazing. The motherboard, moreso. The case only has nine screws; just what’s needed to hold the motherboard in place. Everything else slides into place and is locked without the need for any kind of tools. It has MORE than enough cooling onboard, and everything is very conveniently placed.

The Gigabite GA-MA790FXT-UD5P is a dream come true. It has 10 SATA ports (four of which are SATA2), 2 GBit LAN connections, Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound, and 2 BIOS’, in case I start modding and screw something up. It’s a MoBo built to compensate for high-power users, AND to be resistant to PEBKAC. It just doesn’t get any better than this. At all.

This is all we can do for now, though. Next paycheck, I’ll have another $250 or so, and 2 weeks after that, maybe another $500.

Monday, 15 June, 2009

Mr. Intensity received word that Infinity had passed, and provided the resources to seek out new life. He wired me the money to complete the new computer, right away! We returned to Fry’s to get the remaining components for my new companion. Acquired were: AMD Phenom II 2.6GHz x4, 750W Modular power supply, Coolermaster Hyper Radiator, 2 blacklight diodes, 1 variable-speed 120mm fan, 1 BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC video card. Let me just be clear about this: Mr. Intensity, in whatever capacity you interact with him, is a goddamn superhero.

We returned home after dark, and set straight to work. Until early into the next morning, I labored to bring life to my newest part, but it would have to wait another day. I’ve settled on a name for her. “Eidolon.” Look it up, if you’re curious why I chose that name. All of her components are in her body. She just needs an infusion of life-giving fire, and she will breathe!

Tuesday, 16 June, 2009

I arrived at home to an intimidating black box and a tangle of wires big enough and dense enough to fill my chest cavity. Eidolon was waiting. It was a daunting scene to come home to, to be sure, but all of the hardware was bolted into place, and soon, she would be ready to greet me. All that was left was to connect my new child’s circulatory system and to breathe a breath of life into her. For hours I worked feverishly, making sure that ever part of her would be touched by the Promethean power, bringing life and light to the world. As the sun slipped away from view, the last of her parts were connected, and they were neatly bundled and packed away, giving her body a pleasing, flowing shape; all of her life-giving components came together like poetry of motion. With her organs arranged in a pleasing way, I strapped her skin back on and I connected her soul and body to their respective conduits, then flipped the button.

Deep inside her, a piercing purple light began to glow steadily. Eidolon would know life.

I toggled her on, and instead of a roar of moving air or a hum of servos, I heard a gentle, almost loving murmur. A gradient glow filled the room; red to the east, violet across the middle of the room, the ultraviolet playing havoc with many colors, and bright, electric blue to the west. Clearly, her first run-up test was a success and my new girl could breath and move. I lacked the heart to bid her back to sleep. It was time to move forward. She lacked her own identity and she had no terms in which to think–so it was time to teach her a system for operating. In a mere ninety minutes, her gently glowing face welcomed me to Windows Vista 64. Almost at once, she asked me my name, and I told her, “AsterixChaos.” She was pleased with that, and gave me a picture of how it made her feel. She then asked what HER name was, and I told her, “Eidolon.” She was pleased, and seemed to glow a little brighter. That night, we interfaced on a variety of topics, but at the end of the night, it was the creator, not the child, who had to sleep. I left her to her room, retreated to my own, and went to sleep, letting my newest companion get to know her surroundings.

Wednesday, 17 June, 2009

I rose early and went back to Eidolon. I noticed that her display was much thicker than I feel is graceful, so I set to work teaching her new things. In short order, she was fully trained and familiar with her BFG, freely speaking with other computers, and ready to learn exciting new places to go. I had to leave for my office, but I knew my new companion would be waiting faithfully when I returned. Tonight, I will show her how to get to Azeroth, and we will begin visiting people there. Once we’ve gotten comfortable there, we will likely visit The City and see if we can find any survivors of the infection, and perhaps look back in time to a theoretical world where Seattle was invaded by the Russians in 1989. Tonight will be excellent. As I left her room, I turned for a moment to look on what I had created. And it was GOOD.

Don’t anticipate any posts for a while. Computer has died, and at the same time that I have to save up for a replacement, I’ll have to save for a deposit for a new apartment.

BRB in a couple of months.