So far, this month has been plagued by miserably cold weather, nasty colds, and stuff. But there have been a few silver linings to these clouds. But let's not forget that -24 degrees is still damned cold!
Lap-topless and Proud of it!I decided to forward my plans to clear out the current two laptops in favor of buying a newer, faster machine. After selling the Compaq and Thinkpad, I had roughly $320 to put down on a new machine. So I went shopping and the cheapest machine I could find cost roughly $599! Damn it!
I had been toying with the notion of buying a second palmtop computer (Handheld PC). And the NEC Mobile Pro 900 seemed the best option. So I plunked out about $100 for a used one and I must say it is an awesome little machine with tremendous battery life. It has USB! Unlike my little 750c, which is limping along with no expansion. I love the 750's screen and it is fun to work on. The 900c gives me even better options... But I can't for the life of me get Doom4CE to work on there. That pisses me off since the ability to play that game was what drove me to get the 900c.
Yeah, the 900c actually runs my work software, so as soon as I find a workable network card, I can use it to do everything I used to use my laptop to do at work - linux terminal, programming DSL modems, and light surfing. Well, it does very light surfing with Pocket Internet Explorer. :(
I do still plan to buy a new laptop, but it will likely stay at home. I am still looking at the ASUS EeePC as it is very small, but I'm equally considering a IBM Thinkpad T40 as it is closer tot he specs of my Compaq, but has a better screen. I'm looking to spend about $400 total and the T40 looks pretty good in that price range, when compared to buying a newer system. Kris is even on board with this decision.
Network OutageWith the crummy cold weather, Charter has been up and down recently. It has been pretty frustrating at home and I'm worried this is causing issues for the network. I don't like having to reset my router all the time. So, for the time being, I have disconnected the network from the Cable Modem and am running a direct connection tot he living room computer.
The kids are both a little upset, so rather than trying to explain to them anything technical, I just told them the Router is down and we'll have to wait until its fixed, with no actual idea when that will be. It's just as well, given neither of them understand anything beyond - it's not working.
I do plan to set it back up once the snow thaws. I just don't want to risk losing a router, given neither of them use the internet for anything beyond screwing around. They certainly don't use it to work on homework as their grades would attest they don't do their homework.
Other New toysI shared the title of ' Employee of the Month for January' with Kathy, my co-worker as were recognized for working very well together when another co-worker left. I also helped to train her on some of the more technical aspects of her new position. I was sad to see Val go, but Understand her reservations of the new duties she was concerned about taking on.
So, I got a nice $50 gift card for Best Buy, which came in handy as I was looking for a carrying case for the 900c. I chose a Targus DVD placyer case, as it gives me plenty of room for the H/PC, power cord, and USB Serial Connect cable. It also has an outer pouch for storing other accessories such as my various lengths of cable, the USB cords, and PCMCIA cards and stuff.
I bought a USB External 150 GB Hard drive, which was on clearance for $56. That pushes the total storage size on Infernal gateway to 630GB! Yeah. I have plenty of storage for now, thank you for asking. I picked up a 64MB USB drive for $4 at Kmart. Yeah, 64MB is not much, but it was $4 and I can always use an extra pen drive.
Hard drive Spring Clean-upI went through the IG's 20GB hard drive and began backing up files for my reinstall of Win 2k on the machine. It doesn't need it, but I do plan to replace the 20GB drive with either an 80 or 120 GB drive. Yeah, I know I have 610 GB of storage on 2 different drives, but that's what its being used for - spare storage.
I plan to phase out both 20GB harddrives by April, and put them into an networked external harddrive enclosure. Jacob's machine will get either a 40 or 80GB drive.
Annie's computer will get the drive wiped and reformatted. I have a Windows XP Home disk I can reinstall with, so she should be good. Her computer has an 80GB drive, but it needs severe cleaning. I had considered giving her one of the external 20GB drives, but decided that her not having direct access to it and having to access via the network would probably be best.
That should do it for now, but I'll let ya know if anything else comes up. :)
