[Bill,
February 23, 2008]
The New Computer and How it Almost Didn't Get Here
Got my new computer. Dual 17-inch monitors, wireless mouse, wireless keyboard, a webcam (call me on Skype!), 2 gigs of RAM, half terabyte hard drive, dual core 3 ghz processors, a couple of super video cards, a couple of DVD burners. Envy me. Just gotta load up Quark and a few other things, and I've got a serious home office.
Funny thing is, I nearly didn't make it home when the computer stuff was in my car. I must've drifted up pretty fast in the slushy icy snow and I was on a road that hadn't been well-plowed. And so my AWD Subaru skidded all over the road — I was off one side of the road, then the other, then the first side again, then the other side again, and then finally righted the car. It was quite a skid. Good thing there was farmland on both sides of me, and no one around. Once the car righted, I just kept going. These sort of adventures keep one from getting too cocky.
Bit of karmic payback, too. On the way to my friend's house, I was swearing at a woman poking along that exact stretch of road. I was like — you can do 40 here if you'd bothered to buy a decent winter car, then you wouldn't have to do 20. Um, she was right. 40 is too fast on that stretch, even with AWD. But no harm, no foul, lesson learned. 'Til next time.
Funny thing is, I nearly didn't make it home when the computer stuff was in my car. I must've drifted up pretty fast in the slushy icy snow and I was on a road that hadn't been well-plowed. And so my AWD Subaru skidded all over the road — I was off one side of the road, then the other, then the first side again, then the other side again, and then finally righted the car. It was quite a skid. Good thing there was farmland on both sides of me, and no one around. Once the car righted, I just kept going. These sort of adventures keep one from getting too cocky.
Bit of karmic payback, too. On the way to my friend's house, I was swearing at a woman poking along that exact stretch of road. I was like — you can do 40 here if you'd bothered to buy a decent winter car, then you wouldn't have to do 20. Um, she was right. 40 is too fast on that stretch, even with AWD. But no harm, no foul, lesson learned. 'Til next time.
Skype is a free videoconferencing service and you need a webcam for that.
One thing I'll say -- once you've had dual monitors, you never go back. A friend of mine had them, and I worked at his house one day. I could leave the web or my reporting notes on one monitor, and write in Quark on the other. I was able to get the work done a lot quicker.
The DVD burners? Well, I've never been able to burn CDs -- so I guess I'll start by burning some CDs for the drive. The 2001 (so I'm a little late) version of the old mix tape, back when we had albums and would record them on cassettes (even 8-tracks, in my case).
And wireless keyboard and mouse are practically required ... makes it so much easier to type without the blessed cords in the way.