ok, here's a breif history of 'sandra' (digital starion 910).
    1.) around 1995, my family bought this pc.  all i can remember
        was that win95 was the brand new, 'cool thing'
    2.) christmas 2001, my family bought a new pc, and i inherited 
        this one
    3.) early in 2002, i had a friend put mandrake 8.1 on it, but it
        was so slow, i gave up on mandrake and the pc
    4.) during the late part of 2002 i finally pulled the pc back
        out and decided to do my own tinkering
    5.) first i reloaded win95, and then later i installed debian
        off a cd from an o'reilly book
    6.) up to 3-14-2003, debian was running fine, but text-only, i couldn't get
        X or the modem or the sound or basically anything cool to work yet
    7.) then on this unforunate day, i tried, for the first time to 
        update my kernel, recompile it, etc. and as you'll read
        on 3-15-2003, i majorly screwed up (atleast in my mind) and
        for one night i was back to win95 again