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Sunday,
10 June 2001
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No entry.
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Monday,
11 June 2001
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Is it just me, or is this quote from Dr. Keyboard hysterically funny?
Politicians are our representatives, elected to do our bidding for a period of time and then we select them all over again. They listen to what we want and do it.
Sure, being an expatriate Brit living in France, he's talking about the European Union government. Perhaps I'm just more than usually cynical on Mondays, but I'm pretty sure that things aren't THAT different across the pond than they are here. Odd — Dr. K is usually way more cynical than I am.
Sorry... just me being boring and elliptical again.
And on the handheld computer front...
The Register says that Compaq is selling squillions of little iPaqs. All I know is that I have yet to see one in the flesh. When I bought my HP Jornada, iPaqs were rumored to be hot, but you couldn't find 'em. Somebody apparently is, but I wonder where they go to get them?
Remember a while back when I broke my Jornada's screen? I've been so paranoid about it since, that I never carry it my pocket. I have this sort of organizerish leather thing with two zippered compartments and a little cellphone compartment, and I've been tucking the Jornada into a compartment and toting the whole fat-paperback-novel-sized thing around in my hand. So far I've miraculously managed to avoid accidentally walking away and leaving it someplace, but heaven knows how long my luck will continue. The long and the short of it is this... when a "pocket computer" is no longer carried in a pocket, it instantly loses almost all of its spontaneous, instant-on usefulness. Toting a leather thing and unzipping compartments just stinques compared to one-handedly snatching a sleek gizmo out of a pocket and thumbing it to instant, full-color life. Sorry, HP... StarKist wants tunas that taste good, not tunas with good taste. NerdBoy wants pocket PCs that don't break in your pocket, not pocket PCs that need to pampered. Keep trying, though. Someday I'll have my Dick Tracy two-way wrist TV communicator. And when I do, it had better run Linux.
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Tuesday,
12 June 2001
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Yesterday I decided to take another look at motherboards and processors. Actually, for the past few days I've been looking and lusting in my heart over various systems up for auction at www.ubid.com, mostly brand name refurbs. I even bid on a few things, but didn't go high enough to win any of them. My lust remained rather tepid, because I know in my techie heart of hearts that even if a Presario or a Pavilion has a 1.3 GHz processor and a 40 GB hard drive, the actual components used in the system are the cheapest that Compaq and HP can get away with. So while I actually could have scored a gigahertz machine with lots of RAM and a big hard drive for like sub-$600... It would actually have been a pretty inferior box. I was seriously tempted by some of the workstation-type boxes, where for several hundred dollars I could have scored a Compaq Professional Workstation with a 9 GB SCSI 10,000-rpm hard drive. But I was deterred by the fact that I don't have SCSI stuf lying around, and buying it is more expensive than decent ATA100 IDE equipment. Yeah, SCSI is faster and more robust... but I can't afford to make the switch at this point. I was also seriously tempted by some dual-CPU machines, with for instance a couple of 600 MHz Pentium III processors. But again, these came fairly stripped down, and it would've taken a fair chunk of change to fit them out properly. Someday, I hope...
So I went to Pricewatch to see what I could find for gigahertz motherboard/CPU combos, with either Athlon or Pentium III processors. I guess what decided me on a PIII was simply the built-in thermal protection that the Athlons appear to lack. I found some nice-looking deals, but then I remembered that not all mail-order vendors are worth buying from. So I checked out a couple of contenders on the Reseller Ratings website. Lo and behold, the two best-looking deals were from companies that vast majorities of previous customers swore they'd never buy from again. Er-hem! Time to move along to Plan B.
Plan B involved scoping out each promising new deal on the Reseller Ratings website until I found somebody who got a decent rating. What I finally ended up with was a company called PC Boost, who had a quite promising rating of 5.3 out of 7, with 91 responses logged. By margins of over three to one, most customers were happy with their dealings with PC Boost, and would buy there again, and even recommend the company to a friend. Their prices were not out of line, when I compared apples with apples. That is to say, the cheapest prices on Pricewatch were for motherboards like PCChips, ECS, and Amptron. Once I kept searching to find brandnames like AsusTek, Abit, and Intel, the prices weren't quite so lowball. But one thing my near-decade of playing with PC innards has taught me is that cheap components cost less for good reasons. The primary reason is that they aren't usually made very well. So I decided to be conservative and go with an Intel D815EEA2L board, and a retail-boxed (3-year warranty) 1-GHz Pentium III processor with a top-shelf Intel-supplied CPU cooler. I could have spent maybe 25% less on the CPU by getting one with a 90-day warranty and generic fan, and that might have been OK for me. And then again, it might not have. And after 90 days, if it wasn't OK, then having saved a few bucks wouldn't look like such a red hot idea. As a guy whose grocery money has often come via repairing broken computers, I've come to the firm opinion that the basic hardware layer of the computer is not the best place to pinch pennies. I bought a Pentium 166 computer with an Intel motherboard almost four years ago, and it still runs like new. I have every expectation that it will keep running like new until it's really too slow to be any use at all.
So I spent about $350 plus shipping for the combo. I already have RAM, hard drives, a 300-watt ATX case, CD-ROMs, keyboards, mice. The motherboard comes with built-in video, sound, and Ethernet adapters. I think I'll have to buy a floppy drive. Fifteen bucks, maybe? And I can reasonably expect to have a computer that will last in perfect condition for at least three or four years, probably even longer. So did I get a good deal? Will I be happy that I bought Intel from PC Boost? I'll know pretty soon. I'll keep you posted.
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Wednesday,
13 June 2001
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Today I have nose germs that kept me awake all last night. I'm hoping to leave work early and head back home to bed. Hey, it could happen.
Meanwhile, my two USR Sportster external v.90 modems are crawling across the country via UPS Ground from California to New York. Last night they were in Illinois. I should get them on Friday. And my motherboard and CPU should get here early next week, via FedEx Ground.
Who packed my skull with silly putty?
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Thursday,
14 June 2001
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So I went home sick yesterday. Did I sleep? Ha! Apparently half the suburb where my company is lost power yesterday for about an hour, and I got a call from an engineer wondering how to shut the servers down properly, since the UPS was making "I'm going to die soon" noises. Here's an interesting aside... Did you ever notice how impossible it is to do anything to a computer when there's no power to its KVM switch? Er-hem! Note to self — plug KVM switch into UPS. Do it now. Hmmm... Be right back.
OK, that's taken care of. Amazing how many snotsy little details escape my attention until something rubs my nose in one of them. This morning our internet connectivity was still AWOL, so I power-cycled the router just in case that might be the problem. Our T1 supplier, Global Crossing, had left three messages on my voicemail yesterday. They'd detected the problem from their end, and wanted me to power-cycle and call them back. So back I called, and while I waited to speak with a human being, or at least a network engineer, I began pinging. Lo and behold, I could reach the world again. Next step, try the browser. Yep, there's microsoft.com. Back in business, yee-hah.
So that leaves me back in the saddle, with a head full of rubber cement. I plan to set a leisurely pace today, since it appears that my brain isn't getting quite as much oxygen as it needs. Or something. Germs. Phooey. Somebody oughta do something about them.
And for today's reason to hate Microsoft, I nominate the recently-discovered security hole in their Exchange 2000 patch, and the related holed just discovered in Exchange 5.5 Web Client, which is what I'm running. This is the software that lets people connect to their Exchange email accounts using a web browser. Great when you're traveling, or want to check your office email from home. Or perhaps you'd prefer to get a life. Anyway, the Register covers it here, and Microsoft's latest patch-of-a-patch is here. I just installed it, it took about two minutes, and it didn't even make me reboot the server, so that's not so bad. So is it actually an oxymoron to use the words "Microsoft" and "security" in the same sentence?
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Friday,
15 June 2001
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Today I'm leaving work early to go to a little spiritual seminar in another town. My modems came in this morning, URS Sportster 56K v.90 external, as advertised. I won't get a chance to test them for a few days, but I'm hopeful. At about $40 a pop, if they work it's a terrific deal — external Sportsters for the price of generic internal Winmodems. Next week my Intel motherboard/CPU combination should come in. Then we build another PC. Kewl.
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Saturday,
16 June 2001
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No entry.