bytex64.net/blog

My much hacked upon and scraped together Alpha box is finally up and running. I've installed NetBSD 3.0 on it, which required some compiling. Thankfully, pkgsrc made this completely trivial. (Note to Gentoo fanboys: NetBSD did it first) Just a few essentials, like perl, apache, vim, screen, wget... and nethack.

For those unfamiliar with nethack, it is an RPG of the old school. Graphics are ASCII, and minimalistic to the point of being cryptic. The mechanics, though, are full-featured, rivaling games like Diablo. For those able to work through the zillion commands and the dated (or nonexistent, really) graphics, it's a rewarding game that will have you sitting in front of a terminal for hours. For those who can't, there's always Falcon's Eye.

Despite having been a hardcore Linux geek for over five years, now, I've never really picked up nethack. So my initial attempts were pretty poor. Like:

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  5         65  chip-Mon-Hum-Mal-Law died in The Dungeons of Doom on
                level 1.  Killed by kicking a boulder.                  -  [14]

Which is my worst score, but isn't nearly as hilarious as:

 No  Points     Name                                                   Hp [max]
  3        162  chip-Wiz-Hum-Mal-Cha was poisoned in The Dungeons of
                Doom on level 1.  Poisoned by a rotted kitten corpse.   7  [12]

A lesson for everyone here: If you're going to eat a kitten corpse, make sure it's a fresh kitten corpse. The life you save may be your own.