Still need to up my skills for other schools of magic, particularly the ones that govern protective spells. Izumi's defense is very weak.
Easily got CD-rom support to work under FreeDOS; when I went to add the appropriate line to config.sys, I saw it was already there, only commented out. After removing the offending semicolon, it worked..
..although, as I would realize after a while, incredibly slowly. I am not exaggerating when I say "installing Daggerfall will take all day".. in fact, after my latest calculations, it seems it may take over 24 hours. Yeah. Something's not right. But it's reading the CD-rom without errors. Just.. unbearably slow.
I know it's not the drive itself, it didn't pull this crap while installing FreeDOS, or while installing Ubuntu. It's only in FreeDOS it has done this. Anyway, even if I don't fix the issue, Daggerfall should be quite playable as the only files that are ever accessed from the CD-rom are the video files, and there are only a few in-game ones (becoming a vampire, becoming a werewolf, talking to the ghost of King Lysandus), the intro, and dying. And there is a no-CD patch which I intend to use.
And so, the weekend nears the end. Over too quickly, but it didn't feel like a waste this time. I built Matsuri, played Daggerfall, read several chapters in my book, and watched more anime. Both accomplishment and relaxation. I often end up having to sacrifice one for the other. It's been a good weekend, but it didn't make me happy, because I am alone.