Sunday, bloody Sunday
As any admitted geek, my fingers regularly start itching for new hardware or gadgets. Even though I just bought some gear a few months ago I just have to get a new toy. I’m sure you’re familiar with the excited feeling of going online, order something, restlessly check the mailbox and finally receive that small slip of paper on which it says that your package has arrived and now is waiting for you at the local post office (that’s how it works in DK). Of course you immediately grap your bike, ride it like you’d never do in any other situation and race walk into the post office. That’s when you get stopped by the annoying queue slip that ensures fairness in the queue. The lady behind the desk repeatedly pushes the button to serve new costumers and move the queue along, and every time you optimistically check your little slip to see if it in some obscure way has changed to the next number. Anyway, you get the package home and you can’t wait to unwrap it. That’s when the hopeless tape assembly gets in your way, and of course you don’t have a scissor or a knife nearby. So you use whatever sharp features nature equipped you with, nails, teeth, evil laser eyes.. When you eventually make your way into the new toy, your struggles are rewarded with the lovely smell of new hardware.
I’ll bet the majority of geeks – or whatever you may call us – are addicted to this self-satisfying behavior. I know I am and when you combine that with my well-developed impulsiveness it easily becomes an expensive pleasure. But what can you do..
The reason for this babble is, well non-existent, but a few weeks ago I had my eyes set for an Eee pc 900. At the time I just had to have it. Fortunately what has the ability to stall my impulsiveness is bad online reviews. Since I was going to throw away about 2500 dkr I figured it would be 15 minutes well spent. I’m glad I did because the computer – which is the model with one 16 GB SSD – didn’t get a single good review concerning speed. Apparently the 16 GB SSD is painfully slow. I decided to wait till the 901 would be available in DK. It’s supposed to be radically improved. In fact, this very week we’ve just entered is the week the 901 should become availabe in DK. Yihaa, I thought Saturday. Saturday.
Yesterday (Sunday), I peacefully sat on my laptop browsing the source code of an RSS reader called Snownews. There was a few things that didn’t suit my needs – that’s another story. All of a sudden, poof!, a nasty, vertical, yellow line appears right in the golden section of my screen. Imagine one big pixel error that goes from the top of your screen to the bottom. I figured it was X putting an act on, so I restarted it. Nothing changed.. The line is apparently permanent, the screen “broken” (I can obviously still use it though) and my loyal companion through years now is showing its first sign of age. It’s really sad and here I was only thinking about that stupid 901.
All though I’m reluctant to do so, I may have to replace the old warrior. I probably can’t live with the screen and it’ll be too expensive to replace. I won’t throw it out. It can still be used dedicated, with an external monitor or something like that.
So what are my options? Well, fortunately my parents weren’t hesitant to offer me an almost new left over Dell, and I think I’m going to accept that. The Eee is once again out of the picture and I don’t really have the cash to buy a new full featured laptop. My demands of such are quite high so it wouldn’t be cheap, and since the Dell is right here in front of me, actually stronger and smaller, running Ubuntu right now, it’s just easier. It is uglier than my HP though : ).
That was my Sunday and since my last post I’m also back in Aalborg ready for tomorrow when school starts again.
