I just did a stupid-looking little dance on the third floor of the Student Union.

I keep discovering that computers in the Maroon-News office that we thought were broken are actually workable. It's a nice improvement over the time last year when we did an issue with two computers after the scanner computer completely fried (not even Matt Hotham could resurrect that one). One of the computers I found was giving me some problems, because the control panel was grayed out, so I couldn't change the settings to get it on the network. I tried everything I could think of, but it didn't help. This was especially frustrating because this computer was a layout computer (which we need), and had a version of Netscape new enough to be able to handle Webmail, but old enough that it would run on the other M-N computers. This meant that if I could get this computer on the network, I could pass the Netscape files over the server to the other computers, and all of a sudden we'd have 7 computers that could access the internet instead of just 2.

Today Daisie offered to help me fix the problems via IM, so I rushed over to the office. She didn't repsond for a while (she probably had to actually do work or something. Sheesh.), so I started fiddling again. I discovered that by holding down the space bar while starting up the computer, I could get it to show the control panels again. It was all downhill from there.

The only remaining problem was that the port next to the computer was dead, so I now have an ethernet cable stretched across the door to the editors' room. I ran up the hill to buy a longer one, along the way failing to effectively sneak up on Amanda. When I reached the bookstore, I saw the helpful sign "we are sold out of ethernet cords." Bah. But I needed to buy a reading packet while I was there, so it wasn't a total waste.