Here we are again. This is getting ridiculous! I blink and two weeks have passed. I feel distinctly Rip Van Winkleish.


Thanks to all who have helped with previous ones, which I posted on:

• March, 2005: Sat 05 Mar 2005, Sun 27 Mar 2005


• April, 2005: Sat 16 Apr 2005, Sat 29 Apr 2005


• May, 2005: Sun 15 May 2005, Sat 28 May 2005


• June, 2005: Sat 11 Jun 2005, Sat 25 Jun 2005


• July, 2005: Sat 09 Jul 2005


• August, 2005: Sat 13 Aug 2005, Sat 20 Aug 2005


• September, 2005: Sat 03 Sep 2005, Sat 17 Sep 2005


• October, 2005: Mon 03 Oct 2005

Thanks to zaimoni for advice on problems from last time.

Here's my fortnightly update:

• 1. Crashy Skype It seems v1.4 is just out of beta as of today. Has anyone used the release version yet? Is it any stabler?


• 2. Gentoo or not Gentoo, that is the question: tmehlinger swore up and down that he knows what he's doing with respect to Gentoo, so I'm letting him reinstall Fingolfin v3 (the 1.8GHz Pentium 4) as a Gentoo system. Now with shiny 400Gb mirrored RAID! God help us all.


• 3. Subversion: zaimoni's the only one who replied, but I'm just going to go ahead and do it.

Now for the new questions:
Office Windows machine

My office Windows system goes into a blank screen after booting. No disk activity, and this happens whether I use "boot normally", "Last Known Good Configuration" (which seems to be worthless these days), or Safe Mode. The latter brings up a low-res screen with version numbers all around, but it still hangs before I get any desktop icons.

This started on Monday or so, when I came in to find my commit charge inflated to 2.5+Gb. Almost all of that was claimed by Webshots, but after I rebooted, I started getting the above odd behavior. Booting into Safe Mode with Networking elicits a strange complaint: "can't access profile". It's strange because we don't have roaming profiles any more, and I specifically asked the department sysadmins if I might have a legacy one (my computer was installed about two years ago).

I've decided to reinstall Windows XP SP2, and got a volume license CD from Earl already this morning, but has anyone run into this problem before?

Hibernation Blues

How much available drive space is needed to hibernate Windows properly, as a function of RAM and swap?

Also, what might cause a hibernation image to hang WinXP when it tries to restore?

Caffeine: More Bang for the Buck

This is as good a place as any to ask, I'll warrant. Does anyone know where I can find a table of caffeine per serving (or mL) for various soft drinks, along with their cost of possible? I'm trying to confirm or disconfirm my theory that the Wal-Mart Lightning stuff leads the pack in this regard.


Thanks very much in advance!

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Banazir