Without a Traceroute

NOTE: Unlike my other posts lately which were written on or about the day they were posted, this was actually written on the night in question (Thursday, October 2).

I finally got out of Palermo. I’ve decided that I want to visit the Aeolian islands, which are a series of volcanic islands off the coast of Sicily. Apparently they’ve only recently become a tourist destination and are still lightly frequented during the off-season(i.e. Now). In any case, I needed to get out of Palermo. It was dirty and noisy and crowed. “Clusterfuck” is the only word that adequately describes the traffic situation in Palermo. I feared for my life every time every time I set foot on the street. People I met at the hostel said that Palermo reminded them of Morocco or some Latin American countries more than Europe.

This is what large parts of Palermo look like: cars parked randomly and garbage on the ground.

Other parts are quite beautiful, however

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After the hackmeeting ended, my top priority was trying to get my computer situation resolved. I generally hate solving problems by just throwing money at them (although that’s usually remarkably effective at smoothing away life’s little irritations). Not only does it make me feel wasteful and profligate, it makes me feel stupid that I couldn’t come up with anything more clever than buying my way clear.

However, in this case, the answer was pretty obvious. I had a dead computer that could not be repaired here. I needed a new, working computer. Monday, I went to one large electronics store that had an Asus eee PC 900 for €400, and a Acer Aspire One for €300. I resisted the temptation to just buy something on the spot, did some research at an internet cafe and located some specialty computer stores (God, I wish Europe had Fry’s). Tuesday I spent most of the day (4 or 5 hours) trekking around from store to store comparing prices and seeing what was available.

I finally bought a Asus eee 901 (for €400), which is quite similar to the 900, except it ships with the new Intel Atom processor and a larger battery. This means better performance and longer battery life. I also got a USB drive enclosure (€10) and a 120 GB external drive (€50), since the eee pc has only 20 GB of on-board storage. The guy at the store helpfully loaned me a small screwdriver to transfer the old laptop’s HDD to the enclosure, which then led to this unholy scene:

It's Alive!

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