whiskey tango foxtrot

so this didn't really solve anything, i still had the problem.

so there i was, chugging away this morning, sorting files into folders with jumpy renaming themselvesishness all akimbo, when i decided i'd had enough and downloaded a finder replacement.

then i thought to myself, "self, this really sucks. why should i have to pay an extra 35 bucks for a finder replacement when i paid $BIGNUM for this mac in the first place? shouldn't it Just Work (TM)?"

i could not argue with myself, because i have too much admiration and respect for him.

while i was admiring and respecting myself, i happened to notice the current time on my file server. 4am. rest assured, dear reader, that the clock was incorrect: i was most certainly not awake and computing at 4am. and then, interrupting my admiration and respecting, i excitedly exclaimed to myself, "self! could it be that the folders are jumping around because the mac is getting confused about time stamps because the file server has the wrong clock!? could it be that when the mac creates a folder and expects its timestamp to be X but the timestamp is X-4hours, the mac freaks out?"

myself agreed with me, that this was indeed a possibility. not only was it a possibility, but evidently, i did not have ntpd running -- so of course the clock was askew!

i rectified the ntp problem, set the clock properly, and tried again. limited success! a new problem seemed to arise, but noticably, the dancing folders problem was absent! this, dear reader, is the most that one can hope for in the software world: the transformation of a Big Problem into a Littler Problem.

now, it seems that perhaps my aging file server has a bad clockus. i do not know if ntp can prop up my file server's cheap clock or whether the server will slowly die. but in any case, problem kinda solved.