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Plateau, but not the top
Dec. 22nd, 2002 11:59 pmA couple weeks ago, I helped ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
quinnclub transfer his old hard drive, burner and sundry into my old computer (a 200 MHz Pentium MMX with 192 MB RAM). It felt strange to part with a computer I'd gotten to know very well, that I'd bought only one town away from Herr Quinnclub's home town, that I'd souped up from 32 MB of RAM and from a 2.5 GB had drive to a 40 GB (that it could only figure out was a 33.2 GB drive), and that I'd outgrown even though it still had plenty of life in it. I had been thinking about turning it into a music server but I now have plans to do that with the machine I'm using today (a 400 MHz PII with 384 MB RAM and a faster sound card and bus). It felt good to give that box a life again.
I also had a special geek moment of accomplishment while I was slapping Quinnclub's parts into my old box. We were doing this work at a friend's house (whom I'll call Z. for safety purposes) when Z mentioned how impressed he was with my improvement at hardware skills in the past few months. Wow! A proper sysadmin and network guru told me I suck less - time to gush! I could make it in this geeky town after all.
Seriously, it did feel good to get that statement. I feel like it means I'm on to something when I pop open these boxes. Somerville is a seriously geek-laden town. Hearing that I'd made a good grade meant I could hold my own.
My gift was the remains of Quinnclub's even older machine. He'd been told it would no longer work because the processor was burned out (or something like that). I've had it sitting on the kitchen table for a week or so. I keep wanting to sit down and commune with it -- the PC Whisperer. I finally found out why it wouldn't work: someone had soldered the jumper pins off of the board. Someone had been very purposeful about it, too -- it looked like there had never been pins where once they had been since this computer had once started up.
I'm tempted to buy a Dremel (which is geek for "I'm going to cut holes in metal, so let's hope I don't lose a finger, eh?") and turn this tiny box into a new computer with weird parts. Perhaps it is the Frankenbox I've always wanted.
-perhaps I should get the laundry started, Ps/d
quinnclub transfer his old hard drive, burner and sundry into my old computer (a 200 MHz Pentium MMX with 192 MB RAM). It felt strange to part with a computer I'd gotten to know very well, that I'd bought only one town away from Herr Quinnclub's home town, that I'd souped up from 32 MB of RAM and from a 2.5 GB had drive to a 40 GB (that it could only figure out was a 33.2 GB drive), and that I'd outgrown even though it still had plenty of life in it. I had been thinking about turning it into a music server but I now have plans to do that with the machine I'm using today (a 400 MHz PII with 384 MB RAM and a faster sound card and bus). It felt good to give that box a life again.I also had a special geek moment of accomplishment while I was slapping Quinnclub's parts into my old box. We were doing this work at a friend's house (whom I'll call Z. for safety purposes) when Z mentioned how impressed he was with my improvement at hardware skills in the past few months. Wow! A proper sysadmin and network guru told me I suck less - time to gush! I could make it in this geeky town after all.
Seriously, it did feel good to get that statement. I feel like it means I'm on to something when I pop open these boxes. Somerville is a seriously geek-laden town. Hearing that I'd made a good grade meant I could hold my own.
My gift was the remains of Quinnclub's even older machine. He'd been told it would no longer work because the processor was burned out (or something like that). I've had it sitting on the kitchen table for a week or so. I keep wanting to sit down and commune with it -- the PC Whisperer. I finally found out why it wouldn't work: someone had soldered the jumper pins off of the board. Someone had been very purposeful about it, too -- it looked like there had never been pins where once they had been since this computer had once started up.
I'm tempted to buy a Dremel (which is geek for "I'm going to cut holes in metal, so let's hope I don't lose a finger, eh?") and turn this tiny box into a new computer with weird parts. Perhaps it is the Frankenbox I've always wanted.
-perhaps I should get the laundry started, Ps/d
