Who is a bonehead and did an OS install at 2am? Yeah, me.

Dinah was FAR less painful, though… she went slightly faster, possibly because she’s 32-bit still. Once again Hamachi was an ass and refused to import my keys though I think this may be more due to the infrastructure overhaul they did in the process of revamping the whole damn thing.

The other WTF factor was her network. No, seriously, WTF Dinah– you’ll use your onboard wireless-G chip but not this much-better wireless-N card? (Disabling the G chip makes her COMPLETELY blind to networks– even on her N card.) I’ll put up with it for now, but when I can make my N card usable… >_>;

Didn’t even bother backing up Dinah’s music and such since 1) it’s all duplicates from Blastoise and 2) they got shoved into Windows.old anyway. Merely a matter of moving ‘em into the proper folders. I’m not slapping my MMOs on her this time, as while she runs MUCH faster under 7 than she did on Vista, her graphical capabilities are greatly outdated at this point. Best to let Dinah stick to what she does best: flipping out and pulling stuff quickly. That and Yggdrasil is taking over as a secondary gaming machine.

This just leaves the assembly of Yggdrasil in the morning… or afternoon… and mother’s machines whenever she finishes consolidating her crap. :P *thud*

(No more “Parts and Labor” for you!)

Hi. Blastoise likes Windows 7. He loves it ALL NIGHT LONG.
Only driver I had to loot manually was for the sound card. Though, tablet and video card got their specialized drivers as soon as possible. ^_^

About 45 minutes from reboot to desktop– a little more than my initial estimate of 30 minutes, but still better than, oh, the 2+ hours from waaaaay back when I’d shove XP on things. If anything, the most single time-consuming installation is, of course, WoW. And to think I’m doing this AGAIN when I set up Yggdrasil, ahahahaha. XD

Unfortunately, I’ll have to put off building Yggdrasil until tomorrow. I forget that a new machine config (even if it’s basically an OS reinstall) gets me a bit frazzled… and I’m already wiped out for the day. I wish I could shower but– *degrades into a rant comparing that to glops of paint and not wanting to clog up her shower again* >:(

Finally, my copies of Windows 7 get here. ABOUT DAMN TIME.

Tiger (Evil Stepfather’s laptop) will not be making the jump since he gets so little use, so Dinah will be taking the extra copy.

Blastoise is going first as soon as he finishes copying stuff over to his secondary drive and a couple more installers onto my New Machine Cocktail Bullet Bill. I do not foresee any issues here. If anything, the most time-consuming part will be reinstalling WoW and CoH. XD Blastoise will be munching on 7 Pro.

Yggdrasil gets built as soon as I confirm that Blastoise won’t explode (…this makes him look like a Prinny)– DAMMIT MSNBC STOP SHOWING FOOTAGE OF TOM DELAY DANCING T__________T– or other such garbage. I’ve heard mixed reports of doing a clean install on a virgin drive using upgrade media. Worst case, I could just toss Dinah’s copy of Vista Ultimate on him and install 7 over that, and Microsoft can do the STFU dance. Yggdrasil will be eating 7 Home Premium. Depending on how he turns out, he may jump to Pro in January, but Home Premium should do for now.

Dinah will make the jump last. Among the six machines jumping today, she is the only one who will not be going 64-bit– her mobo says she can, but she lacks the RAM to really benefit from it (and she’s at her hard limit of 2GB, and can’t even use all of it because she has to share part of it with the ATI chip). It just seems less stressful for her to stay at 32-bit. Put another way, it lets her remain a nimble ninja laptop. :P Dinah will also be eating 7 Home Premium.

Squee~

My Windows 7 boxes are in San Bernardino, gasp. Maybe I can build my Robo-Fusoya today? :D?? (Also if you’re building a new machine but are using the Upgrade media like… oh, 90% 0f us who aren’t on MSDN or whatever the hell that thing is called, you might want to read this if you’re having activation issues.)

Since Yggdrasil is taking over as the LAN’s media server… I’ve considered giving him Blastoise’s Gigabit line and sticking Blastoise on wireless. (Yggdrasil will also be inheriting the TeamSpeak server since he’ll be always-on) At LEAST until I can find some way to add more Gigabit slots to my LAN. Supposedly I could just get any old Gigabit switch and piggyback that onto my router and it’d work? The other upside to adding more slots would be that I could stick my Slingbox and PS3 on it, too…

Really looking forward to tinkering with Windows Media Center, though– ‘sup, Netflix support (especially now that ALL of the Law and Order SVU season boxes got added to instant viewing, AWESOME) and CBS’s library via Internet TV streaming (wonder if this includes Craig Ferguson? Don’t see why it wouldn’t). This on top of Hulu/Sling.com, MSNBC, YouTube XL… oh, and my ridiculous stash of torrents, all on a badass HDTV. Bwahahahaha. I was gonna just stick Blastoise’s secondary drive inside Yggdrasil but I’ll just do a straight copy; redundancy is always a good thing when it comes to this stuff.

I still need to cook up a wallpaper to put on the old man box, though. Considered styling it somewhat after the output from Samus’ visor in Metroid Prime. Bonus points if it turns out Stardock’s DreamScapes works on Windows 7, then I could REALLY pull something awesome along these lines… >:D

Wow, when things go wrong, things go REALLY wrong.

See: Best Buy in this case. They just now shipped my Windows 7 loot (with a bump to expedited shipping which I’m assuming is USPS Express On Crack). I’m a little miffed because I wanted to have Yggdrasil built and running yesterday as I’d plotted… but borrowing Joe “YOU LIE!” Wilson to make the above macro, and also watching the epic nerdrage fallout on the Best Buy forums is HIGHLY amusing and makes up for the annoyance. This is, like, epic ball-dropping, people! XD

In other news, I’ve still Pundit Games Ep. 5 and Haruko’s FE Bromide in the Ramen queue… I know for sure November’s going to involve doing the base stills for the AP podcast and while I would ordinarily begin doing Snowschemes as well (because I hate Thanksgiving), I could, uh… probably stand to pad the Magic Coin Block a little bit via Gourmet Ramen so I can better spoil reward my Across minions for their continued loyalty in December. >_>;;;