I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. It turned out quite nice for me, lots of good food at only one relatively low-key gathering. The day was free of the hustle and bustle of trying to go to three different dinners and trying to visit everyone you are related to in one day’s time.
In honor of Thanksgiving I would like to give thanks to a special friend. Geek-ily, showing my true colors, in hexadecimal format, I am thanking my very first computer. Around seven years ago I built my first PC and on Thanksgiving of this year I retired it.
My friend J-Dog, helped me build the monster 333Mhz machine from the ground up. The computer was filled with the latest-greatest, 12GB hard-drive, 128MB of Ram, a $300 4x CD burner, and a killer sound card with RCA, mini and Midi ins and outs. Surfing and downloading with super, dial-up speed for the first couple of years and then onto cable. He, the 333Mhz, started out on Windows 98 SE and then a two day stint of Millennium, which nearly killed the two of us, and finally Windows 2000.
The 333Mhz did it all back then: downloading music, burning music, homework and, of course, porn surfing. As the years progress, it was like owning an old muscle car, I was constantly tuning it up. There were programs running to keep the clock on time because it was slow, programs managing the memory and page file better than windows could, and programs stopping other applications from sneaking into the task bar and taking valuable resources. Only once did we had a pretty nasty scare, the CPU fan quit, but he came through with a replacement fan from a box of parts.
Eventually, as a graphic design major, I started to outgrow the abilities of the 333Mhz. During my divorce we parted ways, I left the 333Mhz with her, the writer. After all, he could still be a great word processor and do a decent job surfing the net. I just had to use the computers at school for the graphic intensive things and went without having a personal computer for a couple of years.
The 333Mhz and I were reunited when the ex asked me if I wanted it. Apparently it had quit working all together and she bought a new computer. By this time I was majoring in video, so he wouldn’t do me much good, but I was curious as to what happen to him. Besides, I am a nasty pack rat when it comes to computer parts. I don’t think much of what I own is useful, they are more like antiques, yet I still haven’t thrown them away. (Anyone have a use for a 800MB hard drive?)
Turns out that the power supply on the old 333Mhz had died, too much puppy hair or 4 years had killed it. Like some sort of medical drama, I took a working PC (a Win95 machine from my collection of antiques) and set it next to the 333Mhz. The wires from the working machine’s power supply, still in its case, were running to the 333Mhz, like two patients next to each other during a blood transfusion. The hard drive was not in great shape because of the sudden power failure so I couldn’t really rescue anything. However, I robbed the power supply from the older computer and put it in the 333Mhz, formatted the hard drive, and got it going again.
Bored yet? I know I am a geek.
I had high hopes for the machine, maybe a music server or a mail server or something. However, that was all fun stuff, who has time for that. Instead the 333Mhz began its new life as a tool for computer repair. Many people were always asking me to fix there machines, which were all working fine, it was just Windows. Any operating system, PC or Mac, should probably be reinstalled every year or two, they just get gummed up and clunky. I would bring the 333Mhz with me to people’s houses, in case they didn’t have a working machine, so that I could go online and research their problem or even use it to download drivers as I reinstalled everything on their machines. Sure, a laptop would have been great, but I didn’t have the luxury.
One time, my buddy Quoc (w00k) called me because his computer died. I brought the 333Mhz to his house and we ordered replacement parts for his PC from it. Quoc’s 1.3Ghz machine had suffered a nasty blow, Quoc fried the motherboard by putting the memory upgrade in wrong. We bought a 2.8Ghz chip and motherboard combo to upgrade his machine. I left him the 333Mhz for the week, in case he needed to send emails and what not. I was still on the road, on my way home from his house, when he called me.
“Chris?”
“What’s up?” I said.
“What did you do to this thing? Did you upgrade it or something?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“Your old computer is faster than mine was, when it was working!”
Well, windows had been on his machine for 3 years, it was very sluggish because of all the crud, like I mentioned above. Of course, I still swelled up with a bit of pride when he said that.
After helping me with repairs the machine got a new life as a server for my phone’s internet connection. There is quite a lot of documentation online to show you how to share your internet connection with your phone. Yet, they were all documents about PC sharing, not Mac. So, I pulled the 333Mhz out again and had it serving my phone’s internet connection for over a year. I figured that 333Mhz is not very fast, but honestly how long can it take to load stuff onto the screen of the phone that is like 250 pixels big. I even added some new software so that I could remote control it from the Mac. That way I didn’t need a monitor or keyboard and mouse hooked up to it.
Recently, I got another donation to my Wayward Home for Neglected Computers, my box of antiques. With some TLC and parts from my collection, I revived a 2Ghz machine. I started playing with Ubuntu Linux to check it out and managed to get the linux machine to act as my phone proxy server. Wow, was I ever wrong about the speed thing. My internet on my phone is like 6 times faster.
So, after getting it all working and set up, I replaced the 333Mhz on Thanksgiving day and retired it to the box of parts. Thank you 333Mhz, you kick ass. If I need you again, I know where you are. 
