Post 3399 - Saturday

Just past 10:30.

Patricia did day one of her stained glass class today. I hung around the house all day. Got caught up on the tv show The Blacklist. Started figuring out what crap to toss out on recycling day on Tuesday. I think there will be quite a bit going out that day.

So, I am using a fairly old desktop computer tonight. I bought it in early January of 2009 when my work laptop was crapping out. I would lug it home nights I was on call at work as I didn't really have a decent computer here.

This was in the dying days of Boxing Week sales that year. I went into Staples in Bayer's Lake, because I love Staples. Looked through the list of computer equipment they were still marking down and saw this HP Slimline. It had 2gbs of ram and a 500mb hard drive and was running Vista. They had one out back still in the box, and it was $297.

I got it.

Over the years, I have put Ubuntu and then Linux Mint on it, as Vista was choking the life out of this little desktop. I bought a card for it to give me two extra usb ports in the back.  It is still running with 2gb of ram, and I am hoping I can find the proper ram to go all the way to 4, so I can get another couple years out of it. But I am still using the computer, a lot. Same hard drive, same everything else. The computer has been a real work horse for me.  I have had to replace a couple of mice, but that's about it. I think I am still using the same DELL keyboard I attached to it all those years ago, as I wasn't wild about the keyboard it came with.

Earlier this evening I was looking for another usb mouse, and found the cardboard box that this machine's peripherals came in. I opened it and found the external wireless antenna for the machine, which I had never bothered to install. About an hour ago I screwed it in the back of the computer, but I am not sure why, because I use a cat 5 network connection. I guess I just like the computer being "whole" for the first time. Even without the antenna, the built-in wireless never had a problem pulling in a good signal from my fibre op network, but it is only about 5 feet away, so I guess I am not being fair.

Not sure where I am going with this other than to note that HP makes excellent computers, so if you are ever in the market for a new machine, particularly a desktop, then you could do far, far worse than to buy something from HP. I have had this computer for nearly 8 years now, and it still fires up without any problems whatsoever.

Newbie is at my feet. I think he's snoring.

No, wait.

Sorry.

It's Patricia.

You guys have a good evening. Talk at ya tomorrow.

Bevboy