I’m suffering from a little from the “don’t have a cool laptop blues.” I own 3 laptops. One is a Compaq, circa late 2007, which is my best performing laptop. The problem with it is that it’s just a little too heavy to be comfortable to carry around. It mostly stays in one place.
I have a Sony laptop that’s much lighter and easier to carry, but it was new in 2003 — and at this point isn’t powerful enough to even keep up with my typing when I’m trying to write a post like this one.
And then I have a 700 Mhz G3 Apple iBook, which belonged to my dad. I’m writing this post on it now. It was new in mid-2002, about as old as the Sony. It’s interesting that it performs better than the Sony for the simple task of writing to a blog like this.
I like the Sony and the iBook as far as physical characteristics. I like the Compaq for performance. So what do I do? I’d like to reduce the number of unused computers sitting around. I could put some things on eBay and probably get a couple of hundred bucks towards a laptop fund. Maybe sell the Compaq and use the proceeds to buy memory for the iBook?
This is what happens when a person doesn’t have to make any serious effort to feed himself. He comes up with petty problems like this to grapple with. Woe is me.
It seems listening to classical music and twittering about it is the thing to do on a Sunday night!
A classic moment on my Twitter feed
A local business, Elite Cleaners, is doing the right thing to help people looking for work during this recession. It’s a great story.
I have a bunch of shirts and sweaters that need to be cleaned which I’m going to take in tomorrow (to show my support) — hopefully the press they got will more than cover the cost of the free services.
This is the time of year that we learn what Buddy’s been up to in the backyard over the winter, and this year was worse than usual because there were no complete thaws to give me any opportunity for intermediate cleanups.
So as the temperature increased the backyard turned into an awful cesspool of standing water. I looked at it with dread, wondering how long it would take the sun to dry things up enough so I could get out there, wrapped in plastic, for cleanup duty.
But then I had an idea. I considered my inventory — a hose, a drill, a drill powered pump, and just enough intelligence to moderate the extremes of nature. I devised a plan. This was the perfect job for a siphon.
I ran the garden hose from the puddle in the backyard to the gutter in the street, which is about 2 feet lower in elevation, but climbing about 1 foot up in elevation as it traveled past the house. Using the drill powered pump (a great tool), I managed to start a steady flow of water. Once the water started flowing, I disconnected the pump and let gravity take over.
It was just a matter of time — about 2 hours or so, before the entire puddle in the backyard had drained. Looking out there this morning there isn’t any standing water at all.
Watching a siphon work is almost eerie. Checking each end of the hose, it doesn’t seem like water should continue flowing, but it does. If only I had caught it on film…
It boggles the mind what some individuals are paid for doing their jobs, especially considering they seem to have been doing them very poorly.
This post at Talking Points Memo ponders the situation with AIG and the Obama Administration’s difficulty handling it.
I guess if I were Geithner (assuming he’s the one who could do this), and I held an 80% stake in a company, and the CEO gave as blithe a response as this, my words would be: “You’re fired.”
Seriously, why are we letting these people keep their jobs? I’m sure we’d be able to find plenty of qualified people willing to do the work at half the pay!
And it should not be 0 degrees outside.
I am ready for warmer weather.
My partner in crime managed to lock up his Linux box just now, so we looked up the secret trick for safely rebooting a frozen system.
You can reboot a frozen Linux box by holding down Alt+SysRq, and then typing ‘reisub’. This will safely stop all processes, unmount the disks, and reboot the system.
Found this tip here.
I mentioned my direct-thermal label printer in an earlier post. I have now received a USB barcode scanner which has been tested and works great.
Cost + shipping: $17.59. The cheapest one at Microcenter is $80. Ebay is awesome.
Now I just need to figure out what I want to do first with this stuff.
Saw the second half of the Edina – Bloomington Jefferson game tonight at Mariucci. It’s always fun to see the green and white.
The Hornets won handily — 5-0. I’m looking forward to watching the state tourney later this month.
