Windows XP setup and SATA

I'm helping to build a computer for my frien's niece. It's now time to install the OS (Windows XP). Unfortunately, Windows XP, being a several years old now, does not come with drivers for SATA. We need to to load these drivers through a floppy disk at the start of the installation. This is a major inconvenience. We didn't buy a floppy drive for the new computer. Who does these days?

Permanent Residency

I recently got granted my permanent resident Australian visa. Am I happy about it? Of course. But to be honest, I was not really worried that it might not be granted. For skilled applications, if you meet all the criteria and your degree is assessed positively, it should be fairly straight forward.

In other news, I've finally replaced my dead hard disk. The new one is double in capacity and cost less that my old one when I bought it a year or so ago. I've been slowly installing my applications back. Right now I'm dual booting Windows XP and FreeBSD 6.0 Beta 1. I kicked ubuntu out.

FreeBSD 6.0 Beta 1 runs smoothly so far. It does not feel like beta software. I usually track the stable branches only, but 6.0 RELEASE is due soon and it will be easier to update the system from beta to RELEASE than from 5.4 to 6.0 RELEASE. I'm building world right now and a custom kernel will follow soon. I'm building a custom kernel to get rid of the debugging stuff that have been turned on for the beta release. This should give us a performance boost.