(written on) Thu Jan 21 10:19:56 MST 2010

It's one rainy shit-ass day. Snowy-slush-freezing rain. Mrs. Bronx has
to, maybe, run out to work later; so we might have to brave it all, but
the judgement call is mine, depending on road conditions. I'm a
conservative driver, so we might be going nowhere.

So, I'm stalled on the kernel compiles for my ancient Pentium II machine
running Squeeze: after trials and heartaches, I suceeded in doing a
Debian compilation, not once, but twice, in an attempt to get it to
recognize my Yamaha YMF-740C sound card. Now, I know this card is
supposedly supported as a module in the current kernel, but I'll be
danged if I can enable it, and compiling it directly into the kernel
doesn't seem to help either. I'd be tempted to believe that it's
well-and-truly shit the bed, old as it is, except that it runs just fine
under Puppy and DSL. So what's the problem...?

This failure bleeds over into a larger goal I have; namely, turning this
350MHz 6GB fossil into an X-less desktop machine, capable of all the
things I'd like a modern desktop to be capable of...fully provided and
understood that I pick up some new skills. See, I don't mind the work
involved in learning CLI commands. And I realize that certain classes of
software will simply be out of reach here, but I'm quite convinced I can
do recording, editing, and the mixing of audio on such a system.

If the sound card were working.

**********

Nethack-n-slash

Now, last night, my 4th Level Sorceror made it down to Dungeon Level 3,
and encountered some stiff opposition in the form of a couple of gehkos
who were way tougher than your average pet store breed. Bastards.
Actually, it was an homonculous that brought me down to just a few
points. So I sequestered myself in a dead end corridor, and tried to
rest a while to heal up. I mean, I had a healing spell, and all, but my
Power Level was low. So, like the newbie-loser I am, I just laid on the
"." button -- you know, I just sort of held it down -- to speed things
up, kind of. It was only natural, right? It was 12:00am, and I just
wanted to move things along. And, boy, did I, because the ":" character
popped out of effin' nowhere, zoomed across the screen, and proceeded to
bite my ass until there wasn't any left (and that's a lot of biting).

"What the fuck! C'mon...!" (And similar such.)

Now, it was late, I had to get up early, and I was genuinely
bleary-eyed. I had an eye-strain related headache, a similary-caused
neckache, and an over all level of frustration with the game that made
the idea of dropping it forever seem oh-so-sexy. So, what could I do?
Create a new character, and keep playing, of course. I went with a
samurai next; I figured I'd whip out some of that zanshin mojo on the
next salamander that looked sideways at me. Kick me some amphibian ass.
No more human chew toy! And, drolleries aside, it was a good choice. I
just about jogged through Dungeon Level 1, only dropping a blessed +0
Japanese arrow into my dog, Slinker, by mistake. Serves him right,
though. A Samurai has his duty, which doesn't include putting up with an
inconvenient pooch who can't even seem to put the bite on the baddies
when it counts the most. I didn't kill him, anyway. (Which kind of makes
you lose faith in those holy arrows -- I mean, it's like
**THONK!**YIPE-YIPE-YIPE!*** yet he's still going strong, getting under
my feet, blocking the way, slowing me down. I have to find some better

weaponry -- then test it out on the dog.) Well, Dungeon Level 2 had its
own surprises, with a general store hidden behind a secret door that I
had to try about a dozen times to find. I go in, and the merchant guy
gives me that fake greeting they all have, and welcomes me to his store;
you know, like he's all smiles and shit, 'cause he's just soooooooo glad
to see me. Asshole, business might be better if people could find the
fuckin' way in! So, there I am, and the place is packed. First thing I
come to is a big wooden chest for sale, and I go over and check it out.
Only the freakin' thing bites me! It's a mimic! And not just any mimic,
but a really pissed off mimic that's rolling hot! And I'm just missing
left and right -- you know, just cooling this gotdamn thing off with the
breeze from my katana, while it's chewing me up like a wad of Stickly's.
Finally, I get a few hits on it, and the thing drops, leaving behind its
carcus and a potion. So, you know, that was a shitty surprise, but
whatever...hail the conquoring hero, and all that. So I gather up the
carcus and the potion, and Mickey Merchant over there pipes up with,
"Ah, a fine choice, my friend! For you, only a bajillion gold!" or
whatever it was.

Say WHAT?!

I just got jumped by a piece of this sonofabitch's stock; I do him the
fuckin' favor of whacking it before it did the same to HIM; and he wants
to CHARGE me for the cleanup?! Maybe I should polish his brass balls for
him while I'm at it! Seriously! The guy's operating some kinda high end
boutique in a deadly dungeon, behind a secret friggin' door, as if he's
catering to the luxury tourist trade. (Actually, since one of the
character classes you can run in this game IS a Tourist, maybe that's
exactly what this was.) Either way, I put everything back -- I'm not
buying shit from this guy. In fact, now I want a PIECE of this guy, but
you know how it is in these games -- the merchants are tougher than they
look to keep you from doing the old snicker-snack on 'em and stocking up
the easy way. Plus, I was down half my points from the mimic fight.
PLUS, as a samurai, I'm Lawfully aligned, so there's probably dire
consequenses for pissing off my god. I was sure tempted though, lemme
tell ya.

Anyway, I haven't got any food, and this guy was charging, like, 220
gold for some meat, when I'm only walking around with 68, so I'm outta
there. I take two steps down the hall, and now a goblin jumps me.
Son-of-a-bitch. Well, I'm still rolling as hot as a snowman's ass, so
this little creep actually gets a few hits on me before I'm able to put
him down. Well, in this game, you have the option of eating a goblin
corpse if you want to. I didn't want to, but seeing as how I was
wandering around without any grub, and you HAVE to eat from time to time
or you get weak and die, I did what I had to do. Only it turned out to
be tainted nasty meat that made me sick -- hey! here's a few more points
off for you.

So I used my patented method that had worked out so well before with my
last character, namely, I sat in a safe spot and hit "." until I was
healed up. More slowly this time, though. And this time, I was only
accosted once, by a gnome zombie, but he didn't last long. The damn dog
set off an arrow trap, too, while I was waiting, but didn't get hit.
Finally, after a while I was healed up, but I was hungry again. So,
swallowing my pride -- and for its size, you'd think it would be more
filling -- I headed back to the boutique. I took a while to really look
around, and this time found a carrot (15 gold -- a regular bargain) and
a can of tuna or something (40 gold -- melts in your mouth, I bet). Then
I left again before anything jumped off a shelf again and attacked.

Earlier, I'd scoped-out a set of stairs down to a really dark place. In
this game, normally, as soon as you can reasonably see something -- say,
a big room as you are entering -- it gets drawn on the screen and stays
there. But this place was REALLY dark, and I could only see a small way
in front of me. Everything was drawn as I approached, then faded into
the darkness behind as I walked away from it. The effect was startlingly
simple, yet quite impressive, and it made me nervous to walk around
almost blind. Especially when devious gnomes and dwarves started
chucking knives at me from the shadows. Shit! Then they started coming
at me from everywhere for a little up-close-and-personal action. They
could see ME just fine, after all. But, suddenly, I was on fire, baby!
The ol' katana was finally making an effort, and those little bastards
were just bouncing off the flagstones, I was dropping 'em so fast. I
must have run into something like twenty of them. Okay, maybe fifteen.
Ten? Alright, four or five -- but one of them was TOUGH. He was the
Gnome Lord, and had on some iron shoes that gave him a good Armor Class.
But not good enough -- no, no. Soon the shoes were mine. I'd taken a lot
of damage down there for sure by this time, but at least I'd done and
gotten something for it.

I retreated upstairs again, to hide in my corner with my dog, like the
violent hobo I guess this game requires you to be, and I healed up. Much
earlier, I'd run into an orc with a dorky helmet that had, nonetheless,
added to his Armor rating. (Not enough to help him, either, heh-heh.) So
now, with my samurai armor, orc helmet, and big iron shoes, I was ready
for trouble! I then made my way down to the next level via another
route, and found myself in a completely different level than the
anklebiter kingdom. And this one had the lights on! All told, I made it
to Dungeon Level 3, as a 5th Level Samurai, and called it quits for the
night.