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Thursday, September 11, 2003

Regrets...
I've had a few.
But then again,
Too few to mention!
--"My Way",
written by Paul Anka
When I hear that song, I think of Frank Sinatra, and sometimes Elvis or Sid Vicious -- all of whom have been known to perform, in their own unique manner, that wonderful song. Wonderful because -- though I don't always enjoy hearing it, I've heard it so much -- the song is a wonderful personal anthem. That's something we all need: a personal anthem. A song that praises our individuality; a mark of devotion to oneself. After all, they say you're going to have a helluva time loving anyone else unless you've first learned to love yourself, right?

This is not to replace your love for your God, or your spouse, or your family. I'm simply saying that we all need to give ourselves a bit more self-love at this time of year. (No, not that type of self-love !) Too many of us beat up on ourselves throughout the year, and then nearly destroy ourselves at year's end. No wonder there are so many suicides during the Holidays; the messages bombarding us are to Buy Buy Buy and to Give Give Give -- but what if you have nothing to give but love? If you have a dearth of that good stuff, then you'll have a bitch of a time spreading it around to your neighbors.

So be good to yourself, whether you're Christian, Pagan, Wiccan, Athiest, Hindu, Islamic, Mormon, Podcastin, or otherwise. Don't take the pills, they won't do you or anyone else any good; you'll simply miss out on the Next Big Thing (which may turn out to be Your Next Big Thing). Just do things your own way, singing that little hymn as you do so:
For what is a man,
What has he got?
If not himself,
Then he has naught.
To say the things,
He truly feels,
And not the words,
Of one who kneels.
The record shows,
I took the blows
And did it my way!

Sunday, November 27, 2005

Dream Machine
...and so find myself in possession of a new, Pentium 3-based PC, having today found a motherboard, CPU, RAM, and CD-ROM drive for a total price of $26 at the Goodwill store near downtown Los Angeles.

Following yesterday's Black Friday purchases, I drove out to visit my mom, a much belated visit. After the visit, on the way home, I stopped for a few minutes at a local Salvation Army store, where the salesman convinced me to purchase an Enermax server case rather than an old Compaq. "If I was thinking of building a computer", he told me, apparently having read my mind, "I would go for that tall case over there..." He directed me to this (what appeared to be) never-used, gorgeous black and tall server case, complete with a 330-watt power supply and three internal fans. I'm sold for thirty dollars, though I don't know why I'm convinced I can build a PC; I've never done so before.

Straight home with the case, giddy with anticipation. Where do I begin? I've only changed RAM cards, hard drives. More recently, a sound card or two. Never have I built a PC from scratch.

And I can't really afford to do so, either. All the parts I've thus far compiled bring me to a grand total of just under $50; since I already have a nice monitor, a keyboard and a few mice, I'd only need a motherboard, a CPU, and some RAM. Oh, and perhaps some type of optical drive, though I do have a few of those sitting in an old AMD K6-2 box. I even have some RAM I may be able to use. So I really only need the motherboard and CPU.

Only. Hell, if I spend more than fifty bucks I'll be cutting into my next month's rent. A quick scan of the Fry's Electronics ad shows the cheapest motherboard/CPU combo at $120. Out of my budget.

That was last night, and you know the rest of the story: today at Goodwill, and twenty-six more dollars in the hole. Add a few more dollars for gas, and...not bad. Not bad at all.

The miracle is that I was able to build the beast, all in one sitting. I guess it's not too difficult to build a PC, but with my luck it'd still take six months for a 1-day job. This must have been one of my blessedly lucky days, though, as I now have a shiny new (well, sort of) PC of my own making. It's not a Hot Rod or anything: it's merely a Pentium 3 450 with 256MB of RAM, but it's got a brand-new 80GB Hitachi hard drive and an Nvidia 128MB AGP graphics card. In a beautiful (and big) case. It's a start, and it's got plenty of room for expansion. Mark my words: one day I'll be running Mac OS X on this box.

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posted by Harold  11/27/2005 12:50:00 AM
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I once posted, in this space (this right column), the following:

If I had friends they would be listed here

That particular bit o' text, that silly and idiotic phrase, was repeated a dozen or two dozen or so times and was intended to be temporary. I had been working on a project -- a new layout for this blog -- and had intended for that text to be placeholder content. That is, the text was supposed to temporarily replace the content that had previously occupied this column (which was a list of links to friends -- that is, other blogs and web sites I linked to). I didn't know what content I was going to place into that (this) space, so I placed a bunch of duplicate phrases here as a placeholder so that I would remember to fill in this space again later.

At the same time, I thought I was being cute with the heading:

NEW & IMPROVED FRIENDS!

The fact remains: I still don't know what content to put here, in this column. Links again? Pictures? Video? Audio? Ads? Oh, hell no! It hasn't come to me yet, but I'm sure it will eventually, and when it does it'll come quick and (as usual) with consequences.