remind me again why I like computers?

Plug for Orca Logic: I bought some memory from them for my Alpha based on the specs in the mobo manual -- which didn't work (whether faulty memory or overly picky motherboard I don't know). Orca without fuss arranged for me to send them the duff RAM back (at neither cost nor hassle to me since they just sent me a stamped-self-addressed jiffy bag to use), went off and found a slightly different (less generic) memory module which was apparently recommended for the system, and sent me new RAM. So it all works now and firefox should thrash less.

I shan't bore you with the details of the extended computer woes this week (dying CPU fan, dead CDROM drive, and a run-in with debian bug #337779) but it looks like I've fixed most of the stuff that broke and am starting to make forward progress again.