April 17, 2005

April 17, 2005 Sunday Not that I had any big plans for the day, it just worked that way. Full speed ahead. Let’s see if I can trim it down to something I have time to write, being that it is already 10:00 PM and I’ve still got another computer to configure. Notice, I did not say fix. If anything was seriously broken, I think I’d be in big trouble trying to repair it. I left here just before noon and wound up at the Thrift Mall. Jerry was happy to get paid and he has another Aptiva in there. Strange, it seems to be from the same batch as the last one, or at least was used on a network that for some reason changed the I/O address of one serial port. While there, I got an order for my first custom built computer. It follows exactly the formula I predicted two months ago. Colleges won’t accept anything but word processed hand-ins, which is totally unfair to students who don’t have a computer. This lady, Maria, was overjoyed when I quoted her $250 for a computer and printer including setup in her house. (Plus something else you cannot buy in Florida, I will give you an hour and a half free tutorial on how to use the computer.) Turns out it is for her daughter, who walked in the door. The strangest thing happened then. She just glowed when she saw me, and she is not that bad looking. However, define college student. She is a little over 25 and had two kids with her. Still, what a charming jolt getting that reaction from such a young woman. On the way home I stopped in at ABC and installed a disk burner for Tom, the owner. He paid me ten bucks for the half-hour job, which is fair. He wants to split the computer sales 50/50, and I told him that would have to be after costs. He is okay with that, and in fact, has agreed that since neither of us need the $185 sale money for the Pavilion, we are going to use that as seed capital for the next batch of computers. For example, he did not know that I had sunk $55 into the Pavilion. I also dropped cards of at a few of the other thrifts, explaining what I am doing and generally it was a good response all around. Call me when you get a computer that looks like it might work, and get really fussy about accepting printers unless they have all the pieces and disks. Back home, I called the Hippie. I forgot that practice was cancelled this weekend, I guess he told me. I don’t remember. I needed the time to do some upgrades. Don’t go thinking I’ve learned all this stuff and am not giving the school enough credit. I always could install hardware, but without the ability to fix entire computers, I would not go out an gather spare parts. I insist on learning real repairs, and in addition to study, I have gone out and got all this computer stuff on my own. That is why there is progress. I found some excellent CD burners with a DVD reader built in for $29. That odd combination is great for anyone with a fast enough computer to watch movies. I have no such equipment yet. Other people have so much equipment they don’t appreciate it. Angst. I got the other Aptiva apart and tried the old undelete on its 30 MB HDD. Sure enough, I pulled up both all the files plus Windows XP Home Edition that had been deleted. I could not help looking. The computer belonged to some student who got a PhD in early childhood education. There were all his term papers, assignments, resumes and money accounts. Here was some guy in his mid twenties who made over $120,000 in interest on his bonds while he was in college. His term papers are just useless rehashing of the obvious, basically he concludes that smoking is addictive and counseling may help. I won’t go into it, but it is a sad comment that this person has enough money to get through college to teach children, which I don’t see requires all that much training. But what do I know, right? He flew regularly to Europe to visit with professors and is a totally boring author. Yet, he has the doctorate degree, folks. What is it like to go to school as a millionaire student? “Any system that allows for such inequities will have very full prisons.” I tried several ways to install a few useful items on the old Aptiva with the 540 MB HDD, just to see what could be done. Not much. So, I took a close look at the drives on the new Aptiva. To make it run Windows XP, somebody added a 30 GB HDD to the 8.4 GB drive that was already there. Then they used the 8.4 to boot up XP. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, without an expensive hi-resolution monitor, Windows XP gives you eyestrain. So, I grabbed that 8.4 and put it in place of the 540 MB. Problem. The old Aptiva does not recognize the drive. At first it was wired funny, with a CD and the HDD on the same IDE controller. I replaced the cables and it recognizes the two CDs on the secondary bus. The HDD is set to master, and it is the only device on the local bus, which I think means primary IDE. At any rate, I was up until 1:00 AM trying various combinations. I see my class notes don’t tell me how to get past this stage, and it is far deeper than we have covered so I guess I’ve made progress anyway. Good night.