money for runnin'

I'm doing the Dublin Simon Fun Run on Saturday, a 5-miler in the Phoenix Park in aid o f the Simon Community. Sponsor Me! (I don't have a sponsorship requirement, but if you're feeling kindly, do make with the clicky-clicky.)

running sponsorship, errors therein

Apparently if you try to use the online form to sponsor me, you get an error message. However, your money has been contributed. The website people have been prodded about this and have said they're looking into it. A bit slack, though.

failing in my duty as a nerd

So, just for the record:

• My primary home machine is a 7-year-old laptop, a 450MHz PIII Compaq Armada M700 which I purchased[1] from my employer when I quit. It has had several replacement harddrives and screens, and is now starting to lose structural integrity - the case is bent such that the screen doesn't latch any more. It's also started to exhibit spurious hardware failure, specifically the USB port which dies randomly.
• My fileserver is a 166 MHz PII with about 90GB of disk and, er, 30MB of ram. The BIOS is so old that it can't boot off the drives, so I have to boot it from a floppy disk.
• My webserver, probably the best of my hardware at the moment, is a 1GHz Via C3, bought with the intention of building a PVR or an in-car computer, but my previous web/mail server died (motherboard failure due to cheap capacitors, never managed to repair it) and this remains the only useful hardware capable of handling the abuse.

I also have a second, beefier laptop, but the screen died some time ago so it's hooked up to a flat panel monitor and used mainly as a Windows machine/test box, plus in service as my webserver it kept locking up hard so I'm not entirely convinced that it's healthy. My PDA is a Palm Vx, so old that the various open source PDA tools will occasionally fail to recognise it. About the newest technology I have would be the iPod (bought for me) and my phone (I generally avail of my provider's "free" upgrades when they occur).

I am at risk of losing my nerd merit badge, maybe.

[1] The deal was that I'd work consultancy for it. In the end, I did far less consultancy than was agreed, and my ex-boss handwaved and said, "screw it, it's yours."