Before she headed off to the farmer's market, Patricia noted that the next door neighbours were having a yard sale. After she left, I checked it out. I bought another clock radio(!), which I sheepishly justified as this one projects the time on the ceiling for those people who like that feature. I got a couple of paper back books. I spoke with my neigbhours for a little while before repairing back to the house.
A couple of neat things happened next.
I helped them tear down their "camp". I helped Joanne's husband carry a table back to Julie's deck. Joey's hands were dirty, so I carried Joanne's new stereo to their home. I noticed that Julie was carrying in two computer towers, so I offered to help her carry them in for her, but asked her how much she wanted for them first. Turns out that Joanne had taken them to Value Village after the yard sales were over in the hope of just getting rid of the computers, but VV refused to accept them. The towers were free. The one that caught my eye had a dual processor, a mere gb of ram, and a 320gb hard drive. It was running Vista.
I asked for that tower, and was told sure, take it. I got it home and put it in the hallway. I sat down to watch this week's episode of The Killing when Joanne came over and offered me a cat scratching post for free. They had got it for no cost and were passing it on to us for our cats. Their cats had not accepted it. She also offered me their cats, actually.
I went over to their front yard and carried the post home. I put the tower on top of that. And I waited for Patricia to get home to yell at me for getting more stuff that we shouldn't have bothered with. She got home, and I showed her the stuff. She was delighted with the scratching post. I told her that the computer tower would replace the one I got a year ago for 50 bucks; that one would go to my mother's, or maybe even just taken to an ACE place in the Valley. Not sure yet.
Some 6 hours ago, I came downstairs and copied some files on the old desktop to my dropbox folder. Disconnected the old desktop. Hooked up the "new" one. Turned it on. Worked fine, except that I didn't have the passwords to the accounts that Joanne had had on it. That was fine. I installed the new ubuntu on it, Natty Narwhal, and added the apps that I like the most, including dropbox.
This "new" desktop runs very fast. Where youtube videos on the previous desktop would run sluggishly, on this one, there is nary a delay. Only once this evening did the computer stop for a few seconds in the middle of a video before resuming playing it.
The only thing is that this computer has lightscribe, and I have to find out if lightscribe works under linux. I suspect it does, but I am not sure. If it does, it will run better than it does under Windows.
I may, down the road, upgrade the ram on this computer, but 1gb seems to be enough, at least so far.
I have been so lucky over the years to get computer equipment either for free or at such a nominal cost that it might as well have been free. I have been the recipient of 3 scanners over the years, and never paid a cent for any of them. Today's computer was free. The monitor on this machine cost me 20 bucks, and it's a flatscreen lcd. Got a very nice usb keyboard 2 weeks ago, gratis. I now regret paying for the new desktop 2 years ago, but even that was a year-old model (still in the box) purchased during a Boxing Week sale at a fraction of the cost of an actual new desktop.
Hey, don't hate me because I'm beautiful. If you must hate me, do so because of the luck I have had over the years with the free computer equipment. In some cultures, I could get killed because of it. I feel like Gladstone Gander, Donald Duck's super lucky cousin, except GG probably doesn't get as sick as often as I do.
Nobody's perfect.
See you tomorrow.
Bevboy
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