Loose Ends

1. My office computer has been experiencing weird, intermittent networky problems for months. So far we have ruled out the wiring in the office and the computer's network card. Yesterday I reformatted the hard drive on my office computer and re-installed System from scratch (using the Tiger DVD's erase and install option). Somehow, it seems to remember things, as my hard drive still had the same name. And the initial set-up page was kind enough to ask if I wanted to use the DQ key layout, which it wouldn't have done unless it remembered something about its previous life. The weird networky problems lingered. Couldn't tell whether the machine really is fux0red or if there is still some sort of insidious setting that needed to be reset. This morning I reset the PRAM. I am guardedly optimistic. The sysadmin tells me that he might put this machine out of its misery (it's seven years old) and just buy me a new iMac.


2. The resysteming has had other benefits. This computer originally had OS 8.6 on it, and since then it has been upgraded again and again with nothing installed from scratch. Layers of crazy drivers and kernel extensions lurked as assorted things were installed over the years. Inaccessable and undeletable folders of former users. Those are all gone now. Now my scanner works!


3. While many of my calculus students are clever, several of them were lacking in the prerequisites for Calculus 2.