Yesterday, the new box arrived. Well, most of it at least. In two boxes.
Needless to say, i was a bit confused.
Then i opened the box.
Yep, i get to keep my geek cred (well, some of it at least) and now i know why it was so cheap. So, into the living room, out with the socket screwdriver and on with the latex gloves (they kill static far better than a strap does). Two hours later, the box was mostly built. It's still missing a hard disk, but it's got a CD/DVD player, so it's good enough to run a burn program for a few hours. Actually, i had to run a pair of burn in programs (Dual core, don'cha'know.)
Once i was reasonably confident that the machine wasn't going to catch fire (about 10 hours and never crossed 35°C, half of it's critical operating range) i felt fairly confident that i could move the old drives into the new box and set things up.
Let me take a moment there to let that sink in.
Previously, when i got my windows box, changing computers took several days, most of which consisted of moving data from old drives to new drives, reconfiguring stuff, reinstalling software, and otherwise convincing the machine to do what i told it to.
With my server, it involved me moving the disks from one box to another, and updating ifconfig to use the new network device.
As much as i say that linux is still not ready for the masses, By the Sacred Ghost of James Thurber, i wish it was.
I've learned to be rather paranoid. I once cooked a $5000 graphics card by thinking I was properly grounded. I know one guy that runs a static strap to his ankle, but that seems oddly restrictive. I like the gloves because they work as advertised and I don't have to worry about building up static I don't know about.
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Latex gloves, you say? I've made do with touching the kitchen sink every now and then … (or a central heating radiator.)